Introducing BRAVE (Bare Metal Replication And Virtualization Environment): A new Open Source Tool to Virtualize Bare Metal Deployments

We are thrilled to announce our ongoing commitment to Open Source through our donation of an open-source project to the community. This initiative, known as BRAVE (Bare Metal Replication And Virtualization Environment), aims to provide a virtual, cost-effective, and automated solution for executing use cases that demand bare metal infrastructure. As we continue to develop this project, we are eager to collaborate with like-minded developers and platform engineers who share our passion for creating a ubiquitous cloud-native infrastructure. We invite you to join us to learn more about the early details of BRAVE. Bookmark the link below and be a part of this exciting venture as we welcome others to collaborate and contribute to the advancement of BRAVE.

Motivation of applications for the project

Development and Testing Environments:

Developers can use the tool to create virtualized instances of bare metal servers for testing applications, new software configurations, or updates without affecting production environments.

Automated Testing Pipelines:

Integration into automated testing pipelines allows for the creation of disposable VM instances on bare metal servers, facilitating continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) workflows.

Security Testing and Vulnerability Assessment:

Security professionals can use the tool to simulate different attack scenarios, test security measures, and perform vulnerability assessments in a controlled environment without risking actual production systems.

DevOps Testing Environment Creation:

Developers and operations teams often require testing environments that mimic production setups. This tool can create VMs on bare metal to replicate various configurations, allowing for robust testing of software deployments, updates, and configurations.

Disaster Recovery Testing:

Simulate disaster recovery scenarios by virtualizing bare metal servers and testing backup and recovery processes. Ensure the resilience and reliability of applications in case of hardware failures or other catastrophic events.

Scaling Infrastructure Testing:

Organizations planning to scale their infrastructure can use the tool to simulate the impact of increased loads, ensuring that their systems can handle the growth effectively before implementing changes in the actual environment.

Research and Development:

Researchers or innovators can leverage the virtualized bare metal servers to experiment with new technologies, run simulations, or conduct performance evaluations without the need for dedicated physical hardware.

Education and Training:

It can serve as an educational tool for students or professionals learning about server infrastructure. They can practice setting up, configuring, and managing servers in a safe and controlled virtual environment.

Cost Reduction:

Creating virtual environments for all above use cases at fraction of cost of physical hardware. Elimination of the need for dedicated physical hardware, also reduces associated costs like procurement, maintenance, and space

Head over to BRAVE complete guide.

Watch Demos:

• Brave – EKSA Bare Metal cluster creation
• Brave – create a Rafay EKSA Bare Metal cluster
• Brave – create VMs to Simulate Bare Metal servers

Summary

BRAVE presents a robust solution tailored for executing diverse bare metal infrastructure needs in a virtualized, cost-efficient, and automated fashion. It simplifies such deployments by automating the creation of a cloud-based instance on supported cloud providers and then replicating the entire bare metal infrastructure within this cloud instance through Virtualbox and vagrant-managed virtual machines. Workflows to implement bare metal use cases are offered as provisioners within BRAVE, where new use cases can easily be supported by introducing new provisioners.

Show your support

• By starring the repository if you find it useful.
• Share your thoughts, feedback, or suggest improvements by opening an issue in the repository.
• Help expand BRAVE by implementing a Provider or Provisioner for new cloud providers and workflows. Pull requests (PRs) are highly encouraged and appreciated.
• Join Paralus Slack channel share your feedback and get in the convos #brave-dev.