Seeking Support After Equinix Metal Sunsets

We are deeply grateful to Equinix Metal (formerly Packet.net) for their longstanding support, which has been essential to Alpine Linux’s ecosystem. However, with Equinix sunsetting their bare-metal hosting service, this critical support will soon end. Their contributions have been invaluable, and we thank them for helping keep Alpine Linux reliable and efficient.

This change poses a significant challenge, as it impacts key infrastructure hosted with Equinix. To ensure continuity, we must now find alternative hosting solutions. Below, we outline the affected infrastructure and how the community can help us navigate this transition.

Infrastructure Currently Hosted with Equinix Metal

  1. Storage Services for T1 Mirroring Infra Equinix has been hosting three storage services that power our T1 mirroring infrastructure. These servers are the backbone of dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org, enabling fast and reliable downloads for Alpine Linux users worldwide. The T1 mirrors require 5TB of disk space each and currently use approximately 800TB of bandwidth per month.
  2. CI Runners Two servers act as continuous integration (CI) runners for x86_64 and x86 architectures. These runners are crucial for building and testing packages, ensuring Alpine Linux remains a robust and secure platform. For CI workloads, we require at least 50GB of disk space and a minimum of 16GB of RAM, though more resources are preferable to support building large packages like Chromium.
  3. Development Box A single server has been dedicated as a development environment for contributors and maintainers, providing a performant workspace for day-to-day tasks and troubleshooting.

How the Community Can Help

To continue providing Alpine Linux as a reliable, secure, and efficient operating system, we need your help. Here are the specific areas where support is most needed:

1. Colocation Space

We are seeking colocation space near the Netherlands (NLD) to allow for easier server installation and maintenance. If you can provide or sponsor rack space for our servers, please get in touch.

2. Bare-Metal Servers

Bare-metal servers are critical to replacing the infrastructure we are losing. Specifically, we need:

3. Virtual Machines

If bare-metal servers are not feasible, virtual machines with adequate storage, compute, and network capabilities could serve as an alternative for our development and CI environments.

Supporting Alpine Linux Financially

This transition highlights the need for sustainable funding to maintain Alpine Linux. It is now possible to contribute financially to Alpine Linux through Open Collective, a transparent platform where donations directly support our infrastructure and development needs.

We are incredibly grateful for the support of our community and sponsors. If you or your organization can assist with hosting resources or financial contributions, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Together, we can ensure the Alpine Linux project remains a robust and vital part of the Open Source ecosystem.

Contact Us

For inquiries about infrastructure support or financial contributions, please email us at infra@alpinelinux.org.

Thank you for being part of the Alpine Linux community and supporting our journey forward!