Case Study

Delivering Europe’s
Sovereign Cloud

24X

Faster
time-to-market

12X

Lower
CapEx & OpEx

5X

Engineering
Productivity

Executive Summary

Fuga Cloud is an alternative, sovereign cloud provider in the European Union that specializes in delivering GDPR-compliant cloud services.

Arnoud de Jonge, a co-founder and DevOps Engineer at Fuga Cloud, says that the project that became Fuga Cloud began as a “hobby” among himself and other engineers at the Cyso Group, Fuga Cloud’s parent company.

When the team realized that Fuga Cloud was gaining customer demand and was destined to become the region’s leading sovereign cloud service provider, they partnered with Netris to use Netris’ VPC Networking software for the network abstraction layer.

The adoption of Netris software helped Fuga Cloud obtain network automation capabilities akin to major cloud providers in two weeks instead of investing 12-24 months of time and money in developing a network automation and abstraction layer in-house. In addition to accelerated time-to-market, Netris technology enabled Fuga Cloud to achieve 5X engineering productivity and 12X lower total cost of ownership compared to other options. (comparison table is further)

We want to be autonomous. We don't want to have to ask the network guys at our parent company to make changes for us. With Netris, we can do what we need, fast.

Arnoud de Jonge
Arnoud de Jonge
Co-founder/DevOps Engineer, Fuga Cloud

The Fuga Cloud Difference

Although there are various companies that sell IaaS solutions today – and the big ones, like Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google GCP, enjoy mainstream brand recognition, there is a major and growing opportunity for alternative, vertical, and sovereign Cloud Services Providers (CSP). 

Fuga Cloud stands out in this marketspace for a few key reasons. One is that the company’s infrastructure is based entirely in the European Union, which helps Fuga’s customers ensure compliance with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules.

On top of that, Fuga’s engineers have extensive experience designing cloud environments and supporting workloads in ways that conform with GDPR requirements. That’s a boon for customers who need help setting up environments in a GDPR-compliant way.

But for Fuga Cloud, GDPR compliance is only one facet of a broader commitment to giving customers control and transparency. Martijn Wokke, Business Development Manager at Fuga Cloud, sums up the company’s philosophy by emphasizing “digital sovereignty.”

“We believe you should be in control of your digital assets,” he says. “You should not just be the owner of your data, but also have control of the infrastructure surrounding your data.”

A commitment to giving customers control and transparency is part of the reason why the Fuga team built its solution using open source technologies like OpenStack and Kubernetes and provides clients with full access to the technologies’ functionality. For example, “we expose all the OpenStack APIs to our customers so nothing is blocked off,” de Jonge explains. “If you want to move to another cloud or move to us from another OpenStack cloud, that’s possible with ease.”

``In control of our own destiny`` – Why Netris?

To give customers control over and transparency into their cloud environments, the Fuga Cloud team needs to be able to control its own infrastructure effectively, too – which is where Netris comes in.

With Netris, Fuga Cloud engineers make network management as efficient and scalable as possible. “We want to be autonomous,” de Jonge says. “We don’t want to have to ask the network guys at our parent company to make changes for us. With Netris, we can do what we need, fast.”

For example, he mentions a recent experience setting up IPv6 networking for Fuga Cloud’s OpenStack environment. “It literally took just a few minutes of clicking around in the Netris, interface,” he said. “It took longer to add the network in OpenStack than to configure it in Netris.”

De Jonge and his team also like how Netris enables a scalable, code-based approach to managing their environment. “With Netris, I can put my config in a YAML file and build a new cluster with it, saving a lot of time,” he says. “It’s a very DevOps-y way of working with networking.”

Ultimately, the efficiency and control that Netris brings to Fuga Cloud’s networking operations place de Jonge and his team “in control of our own destiny,” as he puts it. They get to use the cloud infrastructure and software best suited to their needs, while enjoying flexible control over the network thanks to Netris.

With Netris, I can put my config in a YAML file and build a new cluster with it, saving a lot of time. It's a very DevOps-y way of working with networking.

Arnoud de Jonge
Arnoud de Jonge
Co-founder/DevOps Engineer, Fuga Cloud

Comparison Table

Fuga Cloud’s Current Solution Traditional Networking approach Fully home-grown network automation
Switch Fabric HW
$
Multi-vendor, commodity HW
$$$
Single Vendor Lock-in (Cisco, Juniper, or Arista)
$
Multi-vendor commodity HW
Switch Fabric Management
$
Netris
$$$$
Cisco ACI / Juniper MX240 Apstra+Contrail / Arista Cloud Vision
$$$$
R&D: time, money, and maintenance
 
Network Services
$
Linux Servers, SmartNIC, DPDK offloading – turnkey solution - Netris SoftGate
$$$$$
2 x Juniper MX240 or Cisco ASR1006 (border router) +
2 x F5 (load balancer) + 2 x Juniper SRX 3600 (NAT and IPSEC)
$$$$
Linux Servers, SmartNIC, DPDK offloading + R&D: time, money, and maintenance
Support
Comprehensive: Covers the whole network system as a single solution.
Fractured: Covers individual parts of the network as separate systems.
None
Time to market 1/2 Month 6-12 Months 12 Months (R&D)
CapEx 1x 12x (specialized HW) 1x
OpEx 1x 6x (licenses + salaries) 13x (R&D)
Maintainers The Existing Engineers
Minimum +2 extra roles:
 
Network Architect, Network Automation Developer
Minimum +5 extra roles: 
 
Product Manager, Network Architect, System Architect, Network Automation Developer, Network Automation QA Engineer

It literally took just a few minutes of clicking around in the Netris, interface. It took longer to add the network in OpenStack than to configure it in Netris.

Arnoud de Jonge
Arnoud de Jonge
Co-founder/DevOps Engineer, Fuga Cloud

Comparison Table

It literally took just a few minutes of clicking around in the Netris, interface. It took longer to add the network in OpenStack than to configure it in Netris.

Arnoud de Jonge
Arnoud de Jonge
Co-founder/DevOps Engineer, Fuga Cloud

High Level Architecture

Fuga Cloud Region High Level Architecture

Infrastructure Software Stack

Switch HW: Nvidia Spectrum SN2100

Switch OS: Nvidia Cumulus Linux

Switch Management: Netris

Border Routing: FRR + DPDK + Netris

Elastic Load Balancing: DPDK + Netris

NAT: DPDK + Netris

Firewall: DPDK + Netris

DHCP: ISC KEA + Netris

Site-to-Site VPN: Wireguard + Netris

Server Virtualization: Open Stack

Containers: Kubernetes

IaC: Terraform

Doubling-down on Networking Efficiency

Fuga Cloud already relies on Netris as a core solution for its network operations needs. But the company looks forward to doing even more with the tool as it continues its mission of bringing flexible, open source, GDPR-friendly cloud solutions to businesses.

For example, de Jonge says that his team is evaluating using Netris to handle traffic hand-off between its infrastructure and external data centers. The vision is to use the Netris API in conjunction with a cloud interconnect service, allowing Fuga cloud to give customers the option of purchasing network circuits, which Netris would then provision on the backend.

The team also plans to expand its use of Netris to assist in its observability strategy. They’ve already developed an open source exporter to scrape the Netris API for metrics, opening up new possibilities for tracking network health.

Conclusion: Flexible cloud computing meets flexible networking

Fuga Cloud represents a new vision for cloud computing – one where customers have deep visibility into and control over their cloud environments, and where compliance happens by default.

At Netris, we share a similar vision. We bring cloud networking abstractions for flexible network configuration and management to everyone, no matter which infrastructure they choose or which network setups they require.

Netris

Own Your Cloud

Contact info
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