Bridging the gap between cloud agility and bare metal performance has always been a delicate dance of stakeholder priorities, time, and money. From the beginning, Cycle set out to be one of the best Kubernetes alternatives. We empower users, giving them autonomy to make crucial infrastructure decisions, instead of locking them into the control of hyperscalars or getting lost in bloated ecosystems. Now as we shift into more than just a container orchestration platform, our commitment to empowering users hasn't changed, but our users' capabilities have expanded dramatically.

We are now a compute platform, a DevOps platform, a Kubernetes alternative, and a VMware alternative—all in one. When you boil it down, our users bring raw compute from any source, and we provide tools to scale, manage, and secure their products appropriately.

What led us here?

Over the last few weeks, we have released a number of key features. These unlock new capabilities for those who would previously piece together a number of providers and tools into a stack to accomplish a single objective: to build a great product for their customers and meet key business requirements.

Two of the most important features we released are VM support and Virtual Providers. You can read more about the release here .

So who really cares?

Our users. In the few weeks since our initial release, a number of customers have started using these new features, and we thought it would be valuable to point out some of the more interesting use cases we've seen so far!

Bare Metal

Vultr (Native integration)

Vultr is a Cycle native cloud partner. They also offer Vultr Bare Metal, which gives you full access to dedicated physical servers—no virtualization layer, no shared resources, and no noisy neighbors.

Key features:

• Dedicated single-tenant hardware with your choice of AMD or Intel CPUs
• Optional NVIDIA or AMD GPUs for AI, ML, or compute-heavy workloads
• Full hardware access—no hypervisor, no abstraction
• Install any custom operating system you need
• Automate everything via API or CLI
• Seamless integration with Vultr Block, Object, and File Storage
• Transparent, predictable pricing that scales with your needs

Hetzner

Hetzner was one of the first integrations generated via Virtual Providers. Hetzner is a German-based infrastructure provider offering high-performance bare metal servers, cloud instances, and colocation services at highly competitive prices.

Key features:

• High-performance hardware (Intel/AMD CPUs, NVMe SSDs, ECC RAM)

• Root access and full control

• Custom ISO support

• No virtualization overhead

• Unlimited traffic (with fair use policies)

Open Metal (Custom ISO generation)

Open Metal is a cloud infrastructure provider that offers on-demand, fully automated private clouds built on OpenStack. It combines the flexibility of public cloud with the security and predictability of private infrastructure.

Key features:

• On-Demand Private Clouds
• Full Infrastructure Control
• High Performance Storage
• API & Automation Ready
• Built-in Security & Compliance

On-Prem

639 Cloud - Data Center Use Case

639 Cloud is a solar-powered green data center. Cycle's platform enabled them to deploy a fully automated, solar-powered data center on their own hardware—no on-site staff and no bloated software costs.

“Cycle's platform enabled us to deploy a fully automated, solar-powered data center on our own hardware—with no on-site staff and no bloated software costs. Their ability to orchestrate bare metal, virtual machines, and private cloud gives us powerful flexibility without added complexity. It's the kind of partnership that lets teams like ours focus on what matters—performance, reliability, and scale.”

Russ Dailey, VP of Data Centers, 639 Cloud

Pure On-Prem

The server in your closet, or under your colleague's desk, can now be managed alongside your other infrastructure. Several teams have joined multiple on-prem servers through Virtual Providers, running both Linux and Windows VMs alongside containers as they look to break away from VMware.

Hybrid

80% of Cycle users are adopting a hybrid model in some way. AWS and GCP, or Vultr and on-prem—you name it. With platform-supported HA and easy migration between providers or servers, hybrid environments are seamless.

What's Next?

The market is moving away from tools that add complexity and limit flexibility. Companies want infrastructure that meets them where they are. Whether it's reliability, cost, or performance, Cycle connects you with the right provider and hardware—all within one platform. We continue to support hyperscalers like AWS and GCP, but when teams are ready to break away, we're here to help.