Building Sovereign Cloud from Bare Metal to Kubernetes | metal-stack & SONiC

Описание: How do you build a sovereign cloud on fully open technology?

At Cloudfest 2026, Frank Krämer (STORDIS) sits down with Markus Fensterer of x-cellent technologies to talk about metal-stack, SONiC, and open networking in regulated data centers.

metal-stack is x-cellent's open-source bare-metal API — it automates servers, switches, and networking in a single control plane, deliberately kept as a minimal layer from bare metal to Kubernetes. It's also the technology behind metalstack.cloud, x-cellent's managed offering, so customers get the same experience on-prem and in the cloud. x-cellent has been working with open source since 1998, bringing it into critical environments like banking, energy, and the public sector.

Markus explains why open networking is central to the stack: Edgecore white box switches running SONiC let x-cellent deploy its own SDN controller for metal-stack, partitioning private networks and connecting them across racks with VXLAN. He also covers the C5 certification achieved by FI-TS on metal-stack, the growing European interest in sovereign cloud, and how metal-stack differs from OpenStack.

Looking ahead, x-cellent is broadening hardware vendor and switch support — so customers can switch vendors easily when supply chains shift.

In this video:

00:00 Full open source in the data center
00:20 Welcome from Cloudfest 26
00:30 What x-cellent and metal-stack do
00:44 One experience: cloud platform and on-prem
01:11 25+ years of open source in critical industries
01:43 Sovereign cloud interest in Europe
02:06 Why a minimal layer instead of OpenStack
02:29 BSI, C5 and regulated customers
03:04 Why open networking and SONiC
03:40 SDN, private networks and VXLAN
04:16 What's next: more vendors, more choice
05:09 Wrap-up

Guest: Markus Fensterer, x-cellent technologies
metal-stack (open source): https://metal-stack.io | https://github.com/metal-stack
Managed cloud: https://metalstack.cloud

Host: Frank Krämer, STORDIS

#metalstack #SovereignCloud #OpenNetworking #SONiC #Kubernetes #BareMetal #Cloudfest #DataCenter #OpenSource #WhiteBoxSwitches