Equinix expands support for Kubernetes to help companies scale their apps across any infrastructure

Equinix announced it has expanded its neutral ecosystem of technologies and partner solutions that support the deployment, management and operations of Kubernetes on Equinix Metal. As a de facto standard for hybrid and multicloud workloads, Kubernetes helps organizations operate and scale their applications across any infrastructure.

By expanding support for Kubernetes solutions from leading providers on Equinix Metal, Equinix is making it easier for its more than 10,000 customers to move applications to the edge and closer to the clouds, users, networks and partners that matter most to their business.

“Kubernetes is the go-to deployment substrate for new and evolving applications,” said Mark Coleman, Senior Director of Developer Relations at Equinix Metal. “While Kubernetes initially matured in the public cloud with developer-first companies, leaders across all industries are increasingly utilizing it to accelerate their move toward the edge and operate complex hybrid and multicloud infrastructures. Offering first-class support for Kubernetes on Equinix Metal through a wide variety of partners helps our global customers move faster while maintaining flexibility.”

Building upon more than 20 years of history activating advantage for customers through a neutral, partner-led strategy, Equinix is expanding its Kubernetes ecosystem to help companies simplify hybrid multicloud deployments on a global scale.

With fully documented and tested partner solutions by Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) Anywhere, Google Cloud‘s Anthos, Mirantis Container Cloud, SUSE Rancher and K3s, Canonical Kubernetes, IBM Cloud Satellite, Platform9, Rafay and others now available on Equinix Metal, global businesses have both the choice and the stability required to create advantage with their digital infrastructure.

Highlights

Equinix Metal is an automated, interconnected and secure bare metal service that applies a developer and API-first mindset to foundational infrastructure and provides a fully automated way for digital businesses to access the value of Platform Equinix via its leading collection of DevOps and open-source integrations.

As more global businesses adopt hybrid multicloud as the architecture of choice, enterprise and cloud native companies alike are turning to Equinix to deliver interconnected digital infrastructure on demand from an ecosystem of providers. To make it easier for companies to run Kubernetes on bare metal and extend their hybrid cloud options, Equinix is continuing to pursue a neutral, partner-first strategy by integrating a variety of solutions from leading Kubernetes providers with Equinix Metal.

Key activities powering the expanded ecosystem of Kubernetes solutions available on Equinix Metal include:

• Equinix Metal included as a launch partner solution for Amazon EKS Anywhere in September 2021. Amazon EKS Anywhere can currently run on VMware vSphere, with support for bare metal expected in 2022.
• Mirantis Container Cloud updated in August 2021 to include Equinix Metal as a default deployment option.
• SUSE Rancher 2.6 announced September 2021 includes an updated UI and powerful new features, including an updated provider for Equinix Metal and associated technical guide.
• In August 2021, the Canonical Juju 2.9.8 release enabled users to deploy, integrate and manage Kubernetes, as well as container and VM-native applications, on Equinix Metal.
• In November 2020, Google Cloud announced general availability of Anthos on bare metal, with Anthos enabled to be deployed on Equinix Metal directly.
• In August 2021, Equinix Metal certified as a solution to run IBM and Red Hat applications with an initial focus on Red Hat OpenShift, delivered via IBM Cloud Satellite.
• In August 2021, the Equinix Metal product was added as a supported cloud within Platform9 Managed Kubernetes (PMK). This followed a new Terraform Module for deploying PMK on Equinix Metal in February 2021.
• The Equinix Metal team joined the major public clouds as a fully supported infrastructure provider on the Gardener Project in September 2021.
• Rafay, Kinvolk Lokomotive, CodeZero and Joyent Triton updated their support in Q3 2021, including documentation and technical guides for deploying on Equinix Metal.
• Cloud Provider Equinix Metal (CPEM) 3.2 released in July 2021 and included dozens of improvements to enable the Equinix Metal partner ecosystem.

Equinix investments in the cloud native community continue to reinforce the company’s commitment to fueling Open Source innovation, including Tinkerbell, a bare metal provisioning platform Equinix donated to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) program as a sandbox project in November 2020.

Additionally, in November 2020 Equinix tripled its investment in the CNCF’s Community Infrastructure Lab (CIL), enabling innovators throughout the CNCF community to access up to US$1 Million of powerful on-demand infrastructure resources per year across Equinix’s global footprint.

“We’ve been impressed with how easy the Equinix Metal team has made deploying and managing Kubernetes on bare metal. The work they have done on the Cluster API made it even easier than expected, and their support has been top notch. We also appreciated the freedom to choose a cutting-edge Kubernetes networking option early on, which is now becoming an industry standard. This ability to stay out in front helps us ensure dynamic, real-time content and video game experiences for our end users at Super League, at scale, wherever in the world they live,” said Justin Head, VP of DevOps, Super League Gaming.

“Providing our customers with an intuitive experience when running cloud-native workloads across diverse infrastructure has been core to the Rancher value proposition since the beginning of the Kubernetes story. Having partnered with the Equinix Metal team since the early days, it’s great to see their reach grow alongside SUSE Rancher’s. With Equinix Metal available in global metro locations, our customers can deploy SUSE Rancher to span from core data center through near edge, and then go all the way to the far edge with K3s,” said Sheng Liang, President of Engineering and Innovation, SUSE.

“As a long-time Equinix partner, we have witnessed the wide adoption of Ubuntu on Equinix Metal. The integration of Canonical’s Charmed Operator framework with Equinix Metal provides a multicloud orchestration solution for traditional and cloud native workloads with bare metal performance. We are excited our partnership now also allows us to provide a managed Kubernetes service on Equinix Metal for customers who prefer to focus on the applications and business outcomes only,” said Regis Paquette, VP Global Alliances, Public Cloud and Channels, Canonical.