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Mulga journal

Notes from the edge.

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Migrating from MinIO to Predastore: an S3-compatible object store with erasure coding and encryption at rest
Engineering ·

Migrating from MinIO to Predastore

MinIO was archived in April, and with it went future security patches and bug fixes. This guide covers moving a MinIO deployment to Predastore, from picking a deployment mode through standing up the cluster, recreating identities, copying your data with rclone, and switching clients over.

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Per-tap IMDS — one metadata listener bound to each instance tap, so overlapping tenant CIDRs stay unambiguous
Engineering ·

We Built Our Metadata Service Twice

The request that asks for credentials arrives carrying none, so whatever answers 169.254.169.254 has to work out which instance is asking, and stay right when two tenants are both running 10.0.0.5. AWS has a Nitro card for that. We have a tap device, and it took two designs to get there.

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Open models on commodity hardware — what runs on a single GPU and how Spinifex scales it into a platform
Engineering ·

We Have AGI At Home

The case against open-weight models was always that they're cheaper but weaker. That's mostly collapsed, and the best now sit within a few points of the frontier. So maybe we don't need better models; we need to work out how a small-to-mid org actually runs the ones we've already got, as a real tool rather than one dev quoting benchmark scores.

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Fakecloud vs Spinifex — a Smithy-conformant AWS emulator versus a production platform on bare metal
Engineering ·

Fakecloud vs Spinifex: AWS Emulator vs Production Platform

Fakecloud and Spinifex both answer to the AWS API, which is enough to group them together, but they solve different problems. Fakecloud is an emulator for local dev and CI; Spinifex is a production cloud platform for hardware you own.

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MiniStack vs Spinifex — AWS emulator with real database backing versus a production bare-metal platform
Engineering ·

MiniStack vs Spinifex: AWS Emulator vs Production Platform

MiniStack and Spinifex both speak the AWS API, but they are built for different stages of the software lifecycle. MiniStack is a dev and CI testing tool; Spinifex is a production cloud platform for hardware you own.

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Spinifex 1.19.0 release artwork — nineteen releases from 1.0.0 to 1.19.0
Engineering ·

Spinifex 1.19.0: Nineteen Releases Later

At 1.0.0 in March, Spinifex ran EC2, EBS and S3. Today it runs eleven AWS services. This is the whole run from 1.0.0 to 1.19.0.

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Floci vs Spinifex — AWS emulator for dev and CI versus a production platform on bare metal
Engineering ·

Floci vs Spinifex: AWS Emulator vs Production Platform

Floci and Spinifex both implement the AWS API, which puts them in the same search results, but they are not alternatives. Floci covers local development and CI; Spinifex covers production when that environment is hardware you own.

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Equinix Metal alternatives — bare metal cloud migration options after the June 2026 shutdown
Engineering ·

Equinix Metal Shut Down: What Bare Metal Cloud Users Can Do Now

Equinix Metal went offline on June 30, 2026. There is no single drop-in replacement — what made it valuable was the combination of physical performance, API-first control, and Equinix's interconnection fabric. Each migration path recovers some of that but not all of it.

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OpenStack vs Spinifex — AWS API compatibility changes the on-prem equation
Engineering ·

OpenStack vs Spinifex: Why AWS API Compatibility Changes the On-Prem Equation

Moving from AWS to OpenStack means rewriting your Terraform configs, CLI scripts, and IAM structures for an entirely different API surface. Spinifex takes the opposite approach: it runs the AWS API on hardware you own, so the tooling stays and only the endpoint changes.

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VMware alternatives in 2026 — where teams are landing after Broadcom's pricing shock
Engineering ·

VMware Alternatives in 2026

Broadcom eliminated perpetual VMware licenses, forced teams onto subscription bundles, and triggered price increases of 800 to 1,500%. Teams are moving — here's where they're landing and what each option actually gives you.

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Every tool that implements the AWS API in 2026 — emulators, platforms, and what each one is actually for
Engineering ·

Every Tool That Implements the AWS API in 2026

The AWS API has become infrastructure's common language. Some tools mock it for testing. Others implement it for real. This is every meaningful option, with the distinction that matters.

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Ubicloud vs Spinifex — two open source approaches to cloud infrastructure
Engineering ·

Ubicloud vs Spinifex: Two Approaches to Open Source Cloud

Ubicloud and Spinifex are both open source, AGPL-3.0, and designed to give teams cloud-like compute without the AWS bill. They are built for different problems, and picking the wrong one for your context costs real time to undo.

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LocalStack vs Spinifex — dev tool vs production platform, two tools for two different stages of the pipeline
Engineering ·

LocalStack vs Spinifex: the Right Tool for Dev, the Right Tool for Production

LocalStack and Spinifex both speak the AWS API, which makes them look like competitors. They're not — they solve different problems at different points in the pipeline, and many teams run both.

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Self-hosted IAM with Spinifex — roles, policies, and instance profiles on hardware you own
Engineering ·

Self-Hosted IAM: Roles, Policies, and Instance Profiles Without AWS

Most bare-metal AWS alternatives skip IAM entirely, leaving teams with static keys and no expiry. Spinifex implements the full surface — roles, trust policies, instance profiles, and STS credential delivery through IMDS.

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Running ECS on bare metal with Spinifex — container scheduling without AWS
Engineering ·

Running ECS on Bare Metal With Spinifex

ECS is tightly coupled to AWS infrastructure. Spinifex implements the EC2 launch type on bare metal so task definitions, services, and IAM credential delivery work on hardware you own.

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Air-gapped Kubernetes on bare metal — the EKS API surface on hardware that never leaves your network
Engineering ·

Air-Gapped Kubernetes with Spinifex

Kubernetes assumes internet connectivity at every stage. Spinifex's air-gapped installer and AWS-compatible EKS implementation let you run managed clusters on hardware that never leaves your network.

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Running EKS on bare metal with Spinifex — managed Kubernetes without AWS
Engineering ·

Running EKS on Bare Metal With Spinifex

Spinifex implements the EKS API on your own hardware so eksctl and Terraform work identically against bare metal. Here's what changes and what doesn't.

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Using Terraform to manage on-premise infrastructure with Spinifex
Engineering ·

Using Terraform to Manage On-Premise Infrastructure

Redirecting Terraform from AWS to Spinifex is a provider override plus four skip flags. Here's the complete setup, including the two-endpoint architecture, AMI lookups, and the workbooks in the Spinifex repo.

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Proxmox vs Spinifex: hypervisor management versus AWS-compatible cloud
Engineering ·

Proxmox vs Spinifex: Hypervisor Management vs AWS-Compatible Cloud

Proxmox and Spinifex are both open source and both run VMs on hardware you own. The difference is which API you use to operate them, and that depends entirely on what your team already knows.

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LocalStack alternatives: Floci, MiniStack and production-ready bare metal
Engineering ·

LocalStack Went Paid: What the Free Alternatives Get Right

LocalStack archived its Community Edition in March 2026. Several capable free alternatives appeared quickly. Here's what each one gets right, and where the emulator model hits its limits.

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Running the AWS CLI against your own hardware in air-gapped environments
Engineering ·

Running the AWS CLI Against Your Own Hardware

What changes when you point the AWS CLI at your own hardware instead of AWS? Not much, and that's the point. Here's how Spinifex makes AWS-compatible tooling work without internet.

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EC2-compatible compute on bare metal — a private cloud that behaves like AWS
Engineering ·

EC2-Compatible Compute on Bare Metal

"EC2-compatible" is an overloaded term. Here's what it means when the API surface is production-grade and running on hardware you own, and how your existing Terraform and AWS tooling transfers directly.

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Spinifex as AWS Local Twin — sovereignty and air-gapped deployments
Engineering ·

Spinifex as AWS "Local Twin"

We explore the spectrum from neo-cloud to full hardware ownership, and how Spinifex lets you run AWS-compatible services in a fully air-gapped 'Local Twin' of your cloud deployment.

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Baremetal AI using Cloud-like Tools — Spinifex as the bridge to scalable local AI
Engineering ·

Mulga x Supermicro: Baremetal AI using Cloud-like tools

As token economics tighten and open weight models improve, Spinifex provides the bridge: deploy AI workloads with the same Terraform configs you use in the cloud, on hardware you own.

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Mulga Defense Corporation x Critical Shift partnership artwork
Partnership ·

Mulga × Critical Shift: Bringing the Cloud to the Tactical Edge

Spinifex now ships pre-integrated on Nexus, Critical Shift's US-made rugged JADC2 platform. EC2, EBS, and S3-compatible primitives in a Pelican case, engineered to MIL-STD, ready to deploy.

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Spinifex 1.2.0 release artwork
Engineering ·

Spinifex 1.2.0: Production-Ready Edge Cloud, Released

Spinifex 1.2.0 ships our hardened release: production-ready compute, block storage, and object storage on your hardware. Years of design work on edge-first infrastructure are now in the open, free to deploy.

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Spinifex 1.0.0 launch artwork
Engineering ·

Spinifex 1.0.0: Our First Public Release

After 9 months building in the open, Spinifex v1.0 is here. EC2-style compute, EBS-compatible block, S3-compatible object storage: a complete cloud-in-a-box for the edge, free and open.

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