Equinix and SUSE Simplify Cloud Native with Equinix Metal and SUSE Rancher

As a world leader in digital infrastructure, Equinix is a strong supporter of open source Kubernetes technologies and a long time partner of Rancher Labs and now SUSE. We’ve invited Equinix to author a guest blog so you can learn more about how Equinix is building a first-class K8s experience supporting SUSE Rancher, K3s and more. ~ Bret

SUSE GUEST BLOG AUTHORED BY:
Masood Noori, Partner Manager @ Equinix Metal

Where the Digital World Connects

Equinix is the world’s digital infrastructure company. Founded in 1998, Equinix has grown steadily to become the leading provider of interconnected data center services globally, with 230+ facilities in 65+ markets on five continents.

While global reach is the physical foundation of Platform Equinix®, what makes Equinix truly special in the market is its proximity-based interconnection ecosystem — low-latency, private connectivity between the 1,800+ network service providers, 2,900+ cloud and IT service providers, 1,250+ financial services, 600+ content and digital media providers, and 2,900+ enterprises that house their critical infrastructure inside Equinix facilities. These companies interconnect physically or digitally more than 400,000 times across the platform — creating a “network effect” that grows faster than the next ten providers combined.

Partners have always been a critical ingredient for Equinix. In fact, the company’s name stands for EQUality, Neutrality and Internet eXchange, reflecting a commitment to be the place where networks (and now clouds, SaaS platforms and digital enterprises across all industries) can place their most critical infrastructure and securely connect with each other. This neutral strategy has encouraged an ecosystem-first mentality that provides customers with choice, flexibility, and best-in-class solutions.

Why Metal?

With the acceleration of all things digital, customers are increasingly looking for ways to activate powerful infrastructure when and where they need it. While some customers want to (or are required to) build and operate elements of their digital infrastructure, most users are happy to offload this task to a trusted partner. Equinix calls this cloud-like experience “physical infrastructure at software speed.”

Enter Equinix Metal, an automated and interconnected bare metal as a service launched in 2020. Equinix Metal has its roots in Packet, the leading bare metal automation startup that was founded at the same time as Rancher Labs (in 2014) and acquired by Equinix.

At Equinix, customers who are growing quickly and expanding globally increasingly ask for help operating the digital infrastructure that underpins their deployments. Equinix has responded with a new suite of digital solutions that include Equinix Fabric, Network Edge, and now Equinix Metal.

Why SUSE Rancher and Metal?

Equinix Metal enables customers to easily deploy high-performance, single-tenant bare-metal infrastructure at all the key intersection points on the internet — literally right next to most of the major clouds, telecom networks, cable landing stations, media companies, and financial services players.

The Rancher software stack has long been known for enabling Kubernetes anywhere customers need. With Equinix Metal our customers now have the option to lean on a secure, reliable, and supported extension of their existing private or public cloud Kubernetes deployments. With Equinix Fabric, that infrastructure can be connected directly to clouds, to on-premises infrastructure, and to a growing list of hundreds of destinations at Equinix. We provide these benefits of cutting network costs, improving latency by 50-100%, and providing top-tier global support to 10,000+ organizations worldwide.

“The Rancher Enterprise platform and Equinix Metal provide automated infrastructure with both simple clicks and trusted APIs, deploying thousands of container clusters across hundreds of servers, globally.”  – Jacob Smith, cofounder and VP of Equinix Metal

While using a highly available digital infrastructure on Equinix – SUSE Rancher’s benefits are unmatched. The partnership allows SUSE Rancher customers to reduce capital expenses, gain multi-vendor flexibility, achieve faster time to market, and improve performance with ultra-low –latency, dedicated hardware and networking options. Kubernetes clusters are spread in hundreds of locations, deploying the infrastructure at massive scale with Equinix Metal. We provide the best-in-class infrastructure deployment and container management platforms together.

Better together

Our companies share a common value of providing the best service for our customers through neutral partner ecosystems. We provide solutions for your current and future IT needs and understand the importance of simple and intuitive tooling to meet fast-growing business demands. We give developers the ability to scale their code from testing to production on a globally trusted and agnostic platform, that meets their needs.

Together, Equinix and SUSE deliver open-source solutions on a global backbone of network connectivity. Our interconnected ecosystem of digital leaders significantly saves costs, increases performance, and accelerates speed to deployment. Please reach out to mnoori@equinix.com or to your local Equinix team if you would like to better understand how our partnership can help.

Masood Noori, Partner Manager at Equinix Metal

Masood has a decade of Enterprise Technology experience. His career began in hardware solution architecture at HPE. While covering large hyperscale accounts, he witnessed Open Source being leveraged in production deployments. This motivated him to join SUSE, where he was an architect for software partnerships and later became an Alliance Manager for Rancher container management solutions. Now a part of Equinix Metal, he manages the Developer Ecosystem.

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