Dear ALASCA community,
Only a few days left until the ALASCA Summit 2025! Preparations are in full swing - and to get you in the mood for the event, we have summarised all news from Q3 for you. You'll find the following insights in this issue:
1) Final information on the ALASCA Summit 2025
2) Report from our funded project FOCIS
3) News from ALASCA's Technical Steering Committee
5) Information on past and upcoming ALASCA Tech-Talks
We also warmly welcome our newest ALASCA member:
And now: Have fun reading - if you have any feedback or questions, get in touch with us! ☕
Cheers,
your ALASCA-Team
1) ALASCA Summit 2025: Countdown!
We can still vividly remember the great time we had with you at the first ALASCA Summit last year - and now it's time again! On 3 and 4 November, we will be meeting at the Deutsches Hygiene Museum in Dresden under the motto "Not from Alaska. From Europe. Built for Europe's Cloud Future". You can expect two days packed with talks, workshops, discussions, good vibes and unbridled enthusiasm for the topics of open source, cloud and digital sovereignty.
Here are some final updates:
Few tickets still available
Your countless registrations are already exceeding our expectations. There are still a few last tickets left for last-minute attendees - register quickly: https://alasca.cloud/alasca-summit-2025-tickets/
Our event app - powered by LINEUPR
To make the Summit experience even more enjoyable, we have a great event app provided by LINEUPR - thank you for your support!
No download is necessary to use it: simply open it in your browser to access the overview and make sure not to miss anything: https://alasca-summit.lineupr.com/alasca-summit-2025/
Community Get Together the evening before
On Sunday, 2 November, we are organising a small get-together for all those who have already arrived and don't want to spend the evening in their hotel rooms. Come along to the Augustiner (An d. Frauenkirche 16-17, 01067 Dresden) from 7pm!
And last but not least: Many thanks to our sponsors!
The ALASCA Summit would not be possible without our fantastic sponsors. We would therefore like to take this opportunity to thank you for your commitment!
Gold sponsors
Silver sponsors
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Bronze sponsor
Event App sponsored by
Evening Event sponsored by
2) What's new at FOCIS?
... quite a lot - first and foremost, a new colleague! We would like to take this opportunity to welcome Friedrich Zahnwho joined the team as a software engineer on 1 August. We are delighted to have you on board!
The FOCIS team promotes its – our! – cause –most recently at the SCS Summit in Berlin. Our colleague Daniel Gerber gave a presentation on the topic of "Free as in Freedom for Europe. Open code to battle digital dependencies".
FOCIS also supports the further development of our open source projects. In this context, the Quick Start Guides for Yaook and Tarook were extensively trialled and potential improvements identified and implemented. This included, among other things:
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Conversion of Yaook's documentation to the Diátaxis framework
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Development of Yaook-in-a-box to simplify local testing
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Provision of Horizon images for AArch64 architecture
The FOCIS team also works closely with ALASCA's Technical Steering Committee: Currently on a (semi-) automatic analysis and clear visualisation of the development progress of our open source projects, which will also help projects to improve – even beyond the code.
And, last but not least, FOCIS has intensified its collaboration with ALASCA's member Cloud&Heat Technologies by setting up one of its new clusters. This new cluster offers an SCS-compliant OpenStack provided by Yaook; it is connected to the Dresden Internet node DD-IX; and large parts of it are made available to FOCIS to run services for the ALASCA community – initially and primarily Gitlab Runner for CI/CD. For this installation, FOCIS advised on SCS conformity and produced documentation, which will soon be published as a guide.
3) Report from our Technical Steering Committee
At the 2025 general meeting in August, it was decided that the TSC can continue to serve in its current composition for another year – we therefore congratulate Josephine Seifert, Christian Berendt (23 Technologies), Marcel Beyer (DISQU), Matthias Haag (UhuruTec) and Martin Messer (Cyberus Technology) and would like to thank you for your continued commitment!
The core of ALASCA's mission is the further development of open source projects – and in this context also the inclusion of new projects in the association. Based on the interest of a monitoring project from dNation, the TSC was able to develop and test a formal admission process. This also includes the development of a Questionnairein which interested projects should describe, among other things, their motivation and the match between the project and ALASCA's vision, as well as provide information on the current state of development.
With dNation's application the admission process was not only tested and optimised – it has also brought a new project to the association after the TSC voted in favour of its inclusion. You can read more about this in the project updates below.
Additionally, ALASCA has now its own GitLab: https://gitlab.com/alasca.cloudwhich fortunately was accepted in the GitLab for Open Source Programme. In this way, we have a suitable space for the further development of our open source projects, as well as for the work of the TSC and FOCIS. As a first step, the TSC has set up a governance group in which all possible topics relating to governance, documentation and more can be openly and transparently discussed and further developed.
4) News from our open source projects
Our open source projects were once again very busy in Q3 and made great progress. Before we turn to the reports, we would first like to announce the addition of a new project.
Introducing:
Arko
Arko - a monitoring tool for full visibility and control of cloud environments
Arko was initiated and developed by dNation – a founding member of ALASCA – and has now found its way into our organisation. The monitoring tool is completely open and is based on the following principles for user-friendliness:
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Intuitive: The colours red (=critical), yellow (=warning) and green (=ok) indicate whether action is required or not
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Drill-down: Details on the respective status can be viewed with one click
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Display only relevant information: Only the metrics that are really relevant for the area of interest and drill-down level are provided
We are delighted that with Arko, another project has now found its home at ALASCA, making an important contribution to a comprehensive ecosystem of open source technologies for cloud infrastructures. We will of course keep you up to date on all further developments. You can find more information about the project and how you can contribute to Arko here: https://dnationcloud.github.io/kubernetes-monitoring/
PS: We will soon be able to present you the official logo!
Yaook
The following developments have taken place in Yaook – our lifecycle management tool for OpenStack:
- Upgrade of the first OpenStack services to release 2025.1 (the other services will follow soon)
- Addition of an automatic upgrade workflow for Octavia. A special feature: all components must be stopped during the upgrade and restarted after the database update; this workflow has been newly integrated into Yaook.
- Deprecation from yoga release
- Replacing the bitnami images - we now use a separate image for mariadb or bitnamilagacy for older images
- Development of a Quick Start Guide
- Transformation of the documentation into the Diataxis format
- Cinder-volume supports HA backends
- Further updates for the handling of RabbitMQ. RabbitMQ can now be restarted without failures
You can find more information about Yaook here: yaook.cloud
Tarook
In addition to the technical developments, Tarook – our lifecycle management tool for Kubernetes clusters – reached a very special milestone in Q3: it received the "Certified Kubernetes" status managed by the CNCF! The Kubernetes Software Conformance Certification is a programme of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), of which ALASCA is a member. The programme validates through self-tests that Kubernetes distributions meet strict technical criteria. The certified status confirms Tarook's interoperability with other certified Kubernetes distributions and platforms and integrates the project into the broader open source cloud ecosystem through common standards. We congratulate the community for this great achievement and thank you for your continued commitment!
You can find more information about the certification here: https://alasca.cloud/tarook-erhaelt-den-von-der-cncf-verwaltenen-certified-kubernetes-status/
Anyone who has followed the development of Tarook in recent months will know that Tarook has been "separated" from the Yaook project. This meant a lot of work for the community – but in the end the transition was successfully completed. You can now find the project here: https://gitlab.com/alasca.cloud/tarook
In the meantime we were also able to finalise the new Tarook website – have a look at tarook.cloud!
Krake
With Krake – our tool for automated workload management – everything is running as usual. In addition to technical issues – fuelled by the exchange with our TSC, FOCIS and the other projects – we are now also focusing on the further development of the project's governance. However, particular attention is currently being paid to preparations for a workshop at the ALASCA Summit! Under the title "Multi-Cloud meets Green IT", participants will learn about the use of Krake in a hackathon-style workshop and not only gain new knowledge, but also develop real features.
PS: There will also be workshops on our projects Tarook and Yaook (and other topics!) – find out more in our Programme.
You can find more information about Krake here: krake.cloud
Yake
The community behind Yake – the installation and lifecycle management tool for Gardener – also achieved a great deal in the third quarter:
- Support of the gardener-extension-acl from STACKIT to limit access to shoots via Allow Lists
- Support for Gardener 1.128.6
- Support for Garden Linux 1877.5
- Support of Keycloak in the Seed Cluster for the Garden Control Plane
You can find more information about Yake here: yake.cloud
But that's not all! Also new at ALASCA: Separation Control Layer (SCL)
While we were writing this digest, our TSC voted on the inclusion of another project:
SCL – a Separation Control Layer – has been developed at our founding member secunet since 2021, with the participation of D3TN and Cyberus Technology (also founding members), and will now move to ALASCA.
The project is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service technology, written in Rust, which emphasises security, flexible interfaces and integration right from the start. SCL provides virtual machines, block storage and L2/L3 network functions and is, for example, suitable for isolating Kubernetes clusters.
SCL has just completed its open source transformation and is now available under the GPL v2 licence in our ALASCA-GitLab: https://gitlab.com/alasca.cloud/scl.
We will keep you up to date on all progress and developments and are delighted that SCL is now the sixth project to join ALASCA!
5) ALASCA Tech-Talks
The third quarter brought us interesting technical presentations on open source and cloud technologies. We welcomed Max Harmathy (UhuruTec), Steve Starke and Silvio Ankermann (Cloud&Heat Technologies) as well as Max Lamprecht (STACKIT) and Stefan Hoffmann (Cloud&Heat Technologies):
In November, you can look forward to our last Tech-Talk of 2025 – with Martin Morgenstern from Cloud&Heat Technologies, who will share with us some OVN (Open Virtual Network) developments.
New year – new Tech-Talk season: Speakers wanted for 2026!
Even if there is still a lot to do this year: It's gradually coming to an end. But we're already thinking about bringing you more great Tech-Talks in 2026.
If you have any ideas or specific suggestions relating to open source technologies, cloud infrastructures and digital sovereignty, we'd love to hear from you! Important: As usual, it should be really technical.
Simply get in touch via hello@alasca.cloud..
You can find all further information about our Tech-Talks here: https://alasca.cloud/alasca-tech-talks/
6) Further news
General Meeting 2025
This year's general meeting of our association took place in August. In a hybrid setting, the association members, the TSC and ALASCA's FOCIS employees came together and – in addition to the usual formalities – reflected on the association's development to date and its future.
Our community is particularly pleased with the healthy growth – be it through the admission of new members, the addition of further open source projects or the continuation of various event formats such as the ALASCA Tech-Talks, Round Tables and, of course, the Summit. The internal development of the association's structure was also emphasised positively – for example through the work of the TSC, which has really taken off this year – and of course the successful launch of FOCIS. In addition to these successes, the intensification of cooperation with other organisations, such as the Sovereign Cloud Stack (SCS) and the Open Source Business Alliance (OSBA), is also perceived as valuable – not only for ALASCA itself, but also for the general strengthening of digital sovereignty.
Open letter: Digital sovereignty for Germany and Europe is possible!
In August, a statement by BSI President Claudia Plattner sent a jolt through the German IT landscape. We vehemently disagree with the statement that digital sovereignty is currently unattainable in Germany. For this reason, we immediately signed an open letter from the OSBA - together with 59 other organisations. We would like to thank the OSBA for its swift initiative and all signatories.
You can find the open letter here: https://alasca.cloud/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/250825-Offener-Brief-Claudia-Plattner.pdf
You can find the BSI's answer here: https://www.bsi.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/BSI/Presse/Antwort_offenerBrief_OSBA.pdf.html
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Until next time, we wish you a good time.
