Spectro Cloud announced the release of an open source CNCF Cluster API contribution supporting Canonical's MaaS interface. The new contribution to the open source Kubernetes ecosystem addresses the need for organizations to easily deploy, run and manage Kubernetes clusters directly on top of bare metal servers, increasing performance and minimizing cost and operational effort.

"Running Kubernetes directly on bare metal servers is the next big thing for the Kubernetes community, but it has been challenging and difficult to implement," said Tenry Fu, CEO & co-founder at Spectro Cloud. "So far, we have seen two fairly compartmentalized efforts to evolve the use of bare metal with all of its benefits and to modernize Kubernetes management. The problem has been that each of these initiatives have been siloed thus far. With the Spectro Cloud Cluster API provider for MaaS, we have built the bridge between the two-this will enable the whole market to expand."

This latest open source contribution from Spectro Cloud is the first industry solution to bridge two paradigm shifts for Kubernetes: Cluster API, which enables comprehensive lifecycle management in a declarative manner for Kubernetes environments, and bare metal performance. It allows any team to use CNCF's Cluster API to easily provision Kubernetes clusters on bare metal servers in any data center and manage them just like any other Kubernetes deployment target, without the extra hassle and risks, or additional technical skill sets.

The open source software, under Apache license and available for anyone to download, can be used by IT and development teams that are interested in managing Kubernetes environments at scale and have or are interested in extending to bare metal servers.

Organizations moving to production Kubernetes with multiple projects can benefit from Spectro Cloud's Cluster API provider for MaaS through:

• Simplified management: No need for complex scripting, time wasted in configurations or a virtualization skill set in-house

• Improved performance: Eliminates the 7-10% Central Processing Unit (CPU) / memory hit added by hypervisors, also allows directly accessing GPUs and high-IOPS storage

• Lowered costs: The ability to run Kubernetes directly on bare metal bypasses the need for hypervisor and virtualization licensing

"Kubernetes can be challenging, let alone deploying directly on bare metal servers," adds Saad Malik, CTO and co-founder at Spectro Cloud. "The challenge with bare metal Kubernetes was always in treating those environments as one-offs that required specialized management, customizations and additional oversight. What we have built is essentially a way for any team to deploy and manage bare metal Kubernetes just like any other cluster. This open-source contribution, along with the Spectro Cloud platform, further demonstrates our work in bringing life to the CNCF Cluster API project."

Spectro Cloud's ongoing contributions to open-source projects push the boundaries as the market moves into the next phase of Kubernetes. The new solution promotes the company's vision around delivering the capabilities of container-based development with Kubernetes, without the complexity that hinders widespread enterprise adoption for production-scale environments.

"Spectro Cloud's release of a MaaS provider for CNCF's Cluster API project is an important contribution to the technology industry, extending Kubernetes provisioning and management to now include bare metal target environments," said Joseph Jacks, Founding CNCF Member and Former Board Member, Co-founder of KubeCon. "These types of open source projects and efforts help to advance the adoption of new technologies for both business and solution providers."

Spectro Cloud's Cluster API provider for MaaS is free to download and can be used under an open source Apache 2.0 license. For more information, visit here.