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Inside Open Infrastructure: October 2026

By Allison Price on 11/02/2026

What Happens When AI Changes the Economics of Infrastructure?

Not long ago, nearly every workload was run in a virtual machine or a container. AI-driven hardware costs have upended that default. OpenInfra Foundation board chair Julia Kreger says the cost to build a hypervisor is “now pretty much insane,” so some teams are saying “pass” to a quarter-million-dollar host for 10 or 20 machines and instead ordering a single physical server at a tenth of the price. A server under a company’s capitalization threshold may also avoid years of asset tracking and, in some jurisdictions, taxes. Kreger’s shorthand for these decisions: “What does the accounting office say?”

Kreger, who has spent the past decade on OpenStack Ironic, expects more tactical choices, with virtual machines and bare metal side by side in the same cloud. Ironic has grown from machine installation into ongoing machine management for AI compute vendors, data center operators and enterprises. As hardware gets more specialized, she argues, open infrastructure’s value lies in shared patterns and a community that can flag the problem you’d otherwise spend three months discovering. 

Hear the full conversation with hosts Kendall Nelson and Wes Wilson in the first episode of OpenInfra Live’s new podcast-friendly format.

OpenInfra Foundation News

  • In October, the Project Teams Gathering (PTG) was held where hundreds of OpenInfra contributors met virtually to discuss upstream priorities and make progress on future releases. Check out the OpenStack, StarlingX and Kata Containers summaries here. 
  • The OpenInfra Digital Sovereignty Working Group has kicked off a new series of discussions focused on sovereign AI. The group is bringing together participants from the Digital Sovereignty and OpenInfra AI communities to explore how open infrastructure can support greater control, choice and interoperability as governments and organizations develop sovereign AI strategies. Join the sovereign AI discussion!
  • If you’re evaluating or using Kata Containers, OpenStack, StarlingX or Zuul, please take a few minutes to fill out a User Survey and provide feedback to the community! 
  • The OpenInfra Foundation is pleased to recognize VEXXHOST for its continued support, including a $100,000 infrastructure credit commitment for 2027. The contribution will support the Foundation’s websites and backend services on OpenStack, building on a relationship that began with VEXXHOST’s infrastructure support for OpenDev in 2016.
  • If you’re interested in joining the global collaboration around open source infrastructure, consider membership in the OpenInfra Foundation. Book a meeting with Jimmy McArthur today!

OpenStack

  • OpenStack project teams, special interest groups, working groups and governance bodies met at the October 2026 OpenInfra Project Teams Gathering (PTG) to plan work for the 2027.1 “Indri” release cycle. Check out discussion summaries on the OpenStack blog for continuing coverage as it emerges.

Kata Containers

  • The new Kata Containers 4.3.1 release is now available! Check out the release notes to learn more.
  • The Kata Containers community participated in the recent Project Teams Gathering (PTG) event. Check out the overview blog post to learn more about what contributors discussed during the event.

OpenDev

  • The OpenDev team would like to remind its users to subscribe to the [email protected] mailing list for important updates and announcements. This low volume list is intended for planned and unplanned outage notifications as well as changes to services like Ansible versions supported by our Zuul deployment.

StarlingX

  • The StarlingX community participated in the recent Project Teams Gathering (PTG) event. Check out the overview blog post to learn more about what contributors discussed during the event.

More OpenInfra Community Events

Visit 2026 OpenInfra events for a full list of gatherings. For more information, contact [email protected].