The CNCF Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) has voted to accept Metal3.io as a CNCF incubating project. Metal3.io joins a growing ecosystem of technologies tackling real-world challenges at the edge of cloud native infrastructure.
What is Metal3.io?
The Metal3.io project (pronounced: “Metal Kubed”) provides components for bare metal host management with Kubernetes. You can enroll your bare metal machines, provision operating system images, and then, if you like, deploy Kubernetes clusters to them. From there, operating and upgrading your Kubernetes clusters can be handled by Metal3.io. Moreover, Metal3.io is itself a Kubernetes application, so it runs on Kubernetes and uses Kubernetes resources and APIs as its interface.
Metal3.io is also one of the providers for the Kubernetes subproject Cluster API. Cluster API provides infrastructure-agnostic Kubernetes lifecycle management, and Metal3.io brings the bare metal implementation.
Key Milestones and Ecosystem Growth
The project was started in 2019 by Red Hat and was quickly joined by Ericsson. Metal3.io then joined the CNCF sandbox in September 2020.
Metal3.io has steadily matured and grown during the sandbox phase, with:
- 57 active contributing organizations, led by Ericsson and Red Hat.
- An active community organizing weekly online meetings with working group updates, issue triaging, design discussions, etc.
- Organizations such as Fujitsu, Ikea, SUSE, Ericsson, and Red Hat among the growing list of adopters.
- New features and API iterations, including IP address management, node reuse, firmware settings, and updates management both in provisioning time and on day 2, as well as remediation for the bare metal hosts.
- A new operator, called the Ironic Standalone Operator, has been introduced to replace the shell-based deployment method for Ironic.
- Added robust security processes, regular scans of dependencies, a vulnerability disclosure process, and automated dependency updates.
Integrations Across the Cloud Native Landscape
Metal3.io connects seamlessly with many CNCF projects, including:
- Kubernetes: Metal3.io builds on the success of Kubernetes and makes use of CustomResourceDefinitions
- Cluster API: Turn the bare metal servers into Kubernetes clusters
- Cert-manager: Certificates for webhooks, etc.
- Ironic: Handles the hardware for Metal3.io by interacting with baseboard management controllers
- Prometheus: Metal3.io exposes metrics in a format that Prometheus can scrape
Technical Components
- Baremetal Operator (BMO): Exposes parts of the Ironic API as a Kubernetes native API
- Cluster API Provider Metal³ (CAPM3): Provides integration with Cluster API
- IP Address Manager (IPAM): Handles IP addresses and pools
- Ironic Standalone Operator (IrSO): Makes it easy to deploy Ironic on Kubernetes
- Ironic-Image: Container image for Ironic
Community Highlights
- 1523 GitHub Stars
- 8368 merged pull requests
- 1434 issues
- 186 contributors
- 187 Releases
Maintainer Perspective
“As a maintainer of the Metal3.io project, I’m proud of its growth towards becoming one of the leading solutions for running Kubernetes on bare metal. I take pride in how it has evolved beyond provisioning bare metal only to support broader lifecycle needs, ensuring users can sustain and operate their bare metal deployments effectively. Equally rewarding has been seeing the community come together to establish strong processes and governance, positioning Metal3.io for CNCF incubation.”
—Kashif Khan, Maintainer, Metal3.io
“Metal3.io is a testament to the power of collaboration across open source communities. It marries the battle-tested hardware support of the Ironic project with the Kubernetes API paradigm, using a lightweight Kubernetes-native deployment model. I am delighted to see it begin incubation with CNCF. I have no doubt that the forum the Metal3.io project provides will continue to drive progress in integration between Kubernetes and bare metal.”
—Zane Bitter, Maintainer, Metal3.io
From the TOC
“Metal3.io addresses a critical need for cloud native infrastructure by making bare metal as manageable and Kubernetes-native as any other platform. The project’s steady growth, technical maturity, and strong integration with the Kubernetes ecosystem made it a clear choice for incubation. We’re excited to support Metal3.io as it continues to empower organizations deploying Kubernetes at the edge and beyond.”
— Ricardo Rocha, TOC Sponsor
Looking Ahead
Metal3.io’s roadmap for 2025 includes:
- New API revisions for CAPM3, BMO, and IPAM
- Maturing IPAM as a Cluster API IPAM provider
- Multi-tenancy support
- Support for architectures other than x86_64, i.e., ARM
- Improve DHCP-less provisioning
- Simplifying Ironic deployment with IrSO
As a CNCF-hosted project, Metal3.io is part of a neutral foundation aligned with its technical interests, as well as the larger Linux Foundation, which provides governance, marketing support, and community outreach. Metal3.io joins incubating technologies ArtifactHUB, Backstage, Buildpacks, Chaos Mesh, Cloud Custodian, Container Network Interface (CNI), Contour, Cortex, Crossplane, Dragonfly, Emissary-Ingress, Flatcar, gRPC, Karmada, Keptn, Keycloak, Knative, Kubeflow, Kubescape, KubeVela, KubeVirt, Kyverno, Litmus, Longhorn, NATS, Notary, OpenCost, OpenFeature, OpenKruise, OpenTelemetry, OpenYurt, Operator Framework, Strimzi, Thanos, Volcano, and wasmCloud. For more information on maturity requirements for each level, please visit the CNCF Graduation Criteria.
We look forward to seeing how Metal3.io continues to evolve with the backing of the CNCF community.
Learn more: https://www.cncf.io/projects/metal%C2%B3/