Teams running OpenNebula can now expand a private cloud into new European regions on demand, without needing to buy hardware, build a second cloud stack, or write and maintain provider integrations.
i3D.net’s Bare Metal Cloud is supported out of the box in OneForm, the cluster provisioning service in OpenNebula. Pick a location, a server configuration and a quantity; OneForm provisions the metal, installs OpenNebula, and hands back a cluster you administer alongside every other cluster in your estate.
The effect is that a new region stops being an infrastructure project. Instead, capacity can go where demand appears rather than needing to follow a potentially outdated plan, such as a jurisdiction the data has to stay inside, or users who need the workload close to them. And what comes back runs on the same templates, images, APIs and operational processes as everything else you run.
A European stack, with the control plane in your hands
European infrastructure operated by European companies is easy enough to find at the data center layer. However, it’s much more difficult to find the layer above it, including cloud management software that turns metal into a multi-tenant private cloud, and the control plane run by the customer. That is the gap this partnership closes. OpenNebula supplies the private cloud overlay, and i3D.net has the hardware and network beneath it. Nothing in the stack depends on a control plane you didn’t choose and don’t run.
Both companies came to this work through IPCEI-CIS. The pattern it points to is federation rather than one substitute giant: independent operators running their own hardware, interoperable by design, with real control in the customer’s hands.
The same stack, in the region the workload needs
Because the connector already exists, a new cluster is a location choice. That plays out in several ways:
- Regional presence on demand. A team launching in a new market provisions a cluster there, serves that market locally, and can scale it back when demand settles. The commitment is to a region, not a build-out.
- A hybrid core and edge. The core estate stays where it runs today; the edge runs on ours. Workloads move between your hardware and ours without redesigning the application or the cloud layer to suit either one.
- Multi-tenant service delivery. What comes up is a full multi-tenant private cloud, not a pool of servers, so teams serving internal business units or their own customers can place those tenants in the regions those tenants need.
Low latency is a common thread. This kind of setup is a particularly good fit for real-time services, distributed backends and multiplayer games. And for teams weighing a move off an incumbent virtualization platform, the private cloud layer and the European footprint now arrive together.
How it works
OneForm shipped with OpenNebula 7.4 as a modular way to consume bare metal from external providers. Each provider is a connector in a registry, so adding one changes nothing about how OneForm works. i3D.net is in that registry from the start.
You need OpenNebula 7.4 and an i3D.net account. Define the cluster and OneForm provisions the servers through our API, configures them, installs OpenNebula and returns a working cluster. In OpenNebula’s own testing, instances requested from i3D.net came up and were configured in under ten minutes. You then work with it from the same interface, using the marketplace appliances you already use, with nothing rewritten per location.
Assembling the same combination independently takes a stack of additional tooling and the people to run it.
What comes next
Provisioning is the first step. Deeper integration across the wider i3D.net portfolio and jointly developed features are in planning.
Already on OpenNebula 7.4?
The i3D.net connector is in the OneForm registry now.
