Digital sovereignty starts with the infrastructure. Anyone who wants to operate digital services independently, securely, and at scale needs a reliable foundation: from physical servers to networks to automated deployment.
This is exactly where Fundament comes in. An open-source initiative from the Dutch public administration. As part of the project, metal-stack was evaluated as a solution for bare-metal provisioning.
Bare-Metal Provisioning as the foundation
As large infrastructure environments are built out, automated deployment becomes increasingly important. Servers must be reliably installed, networks configured, and hardware managed throughout its entire lifecycle. Manual processes quickly reach their limits in this context.
metal-stack takes an integrated approach: The open-source software combines the provisioning of physical servers with network configuration. APIs enable infrastructure processes to be automated and made reproducible. This lays the foundation for operating large bare-metal environments.
In the evaluation of Fundament, integrated network provisioning, scalability, and integration with Gardener play a particularly important role. metal-stack’s European origins and open-source approach also align with the requirements for a sovereign infrastructure.
From evaluation to further development
Digilab, the innovation hub of the Dutch digital government, has launched the Fundament project. The project is now being continued and scaled up by a dedicated team. This allows Digilab to focus on new innovation initiatives while work on Fundament continues.
This development is taking place within a broader context: Digilab is part of the newly established Dutch Digital Service, which reports to the Minister for the Digital Economy and Sovereignty. The long-term outlook is therefore closely tied to the question of how the Dutch government can build its digital infrastructure on open and controllable technologies.
Open Source for digital sovereignty
The evaluation of metal-stack as part of the Fundament project demonstrates how open-source technologies are being integrated into the planning of sovereign digital infrastructure. This involves not only the provision of individual servers, but also the creation of an automatable foundation for the operation and further development of a large-scale infrastructure.
The selection process has not yet been finalized. However, the published ADR provides insight into the technical criteria and considerations that play a role in the evaluation of different provisioning approaches.
We are pleased that metal-stack is being considered in this process, and we are following Fundament's further development with great interest.
