The CNCF Community Infrastructure Lab (CIL) provides free access to state-of-the-art computing resources for open source developers working to advance cloud native computing. We currently offer access to both x86 and ARMv8 bare metal servers for software builds, continuous integration, scale testing, and demonstrations for the CNCF projects.
The on-demand infrastructure resource is generously contributed and managed by Equinix Metal, a leading bare metal cloud, as part of its commitment to the cloud native and open source communities. The resources are available from 15 locations across the globe; including New York City, Silicon Valley, Amsterdam, and Tokyo. It allows developers extended testing or the ability to build out continuous integrated infrastructure with the automation and consistency of big public clouds without being required to use virtualization. They offer a variety of hardware types.
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- Allows developers extended testing or the ability to build out continuously integrated infrastructure with the automation and consistency of big public clouds without needing to use virtualization.
- Can be leveraged to curate server configurations for different use cases, test new protocols without layers of complexity, and integrate with leading cloud and developer tools.
- Developers will also have the ability to bring their own image or operating system and have complete control of the cluster, enabling them to test across different environments simultaneously.
- Based on their testing needs, developers can choose from five server configurations offering different sizes, platform features, and architectures (e.g., x86 and ARMv8).
- Each bare metal configuration is API driven, cloud native friendly and takes less than 10 minutes to deploy.
- Equinix Metal does not impose multi-tenancy, virtualization, or an overlay network by default - enabling users to bring the tooling of their choice.
- Carrier-grade features like the ability to announce your own IP space, BGP/Anycast, and native IPv6 support are also included.
- Code being run must be 100 percent open source and must not include any sensitive data.
- Testing should involve cloud native computing, meaning containerization, microservices, orchestration or some combination.
- You agree to write a blog post later about your experiences with the CIL.
- Priority is given first to CNCF Graduated and Incubating projects then CNCF Sandbox projects.
- Resources are limited so we may ask you to reduce your usage when there is high demand for the available credits from Equinix Metal ($1,000,000 per year).
- If the purpose of using the provided infrastructure is CI/CD, please consider using the GitHub-hosted runners with GitHub Actions first, or the CNCF-provided GitHub Runners - https://contribute.cncf.io/resources/newsletters/2024-02-21-projectnewsletter/#github-action-runners