When Eurofiber Cloud Infra rebuilt an entire cloud from scratch, they faced a daunting challenge: how to quickly inventory everything from network backbone to virtual machines while laying the foundations for consistent service automation.
For a service provider like Eurofiber, which offers infrastructure-as-a-service, virtualization, and data center solutions across France, speed is revenue. The faster they can provision new services, the happier the customers and the faster they can start billing.
The challenge: A long chain to value
Eurofiber's infrastructure services span an unusually long value chain. They operate everything from the fiber connections between sites to the data centers themselves, with all the networking equipment, server clusters, and virtual environments delivered to customers. Each new service deployment touches multiple layers.
When considering tools to manage the complexity of this chain, Senior Cloud Architect Cédric Grard explains, “We needed flexibility to adapt to our use cases—and our use cases may change rapidly. On top of that, we had a strong desire to automate everything possible."
Option 1: Integrate multiple tools
Initially, Grard and his team considered stitching together three separate tools: NetBox customized with plugins, a legacy DCIM solution, and their existing Terraform and Ansible automation. Three different systems meant three licenses, three maintenance burdens, and the inevitable data silos and integration fragility that come with tools "that aren’t necessarily designed to work together very well."
With this setup, Grard realized his team would “end up spending more time making sure the automation process works instead of spending that time actually deploying infrastructure for customers.”
Option 2: Build for flexibility
When Grard discovered Infrahub, the core concepts immediately resonated. "It was exactly what we’d been searching for.”
In place of NetBox and the pricey DCIM, Eurofiber implemented Infrahub and used its native integrations with Terraform and Ansible to build consistent automated workflows. Now, Grard says:
"Infrahub is our source of truth, what we consider to be the desired state of everything that’s inventoried within it. It’s the entry point for any new service creation and the authoritative source of information for the entire infrastructure."
The tools previously being considered were limited in their ability to model data outside of core networking devices. They would have required a lot of customization to make work, and even then would still have forced Eurofiber to adapt their usage to tool limitations.
In stark contrast, Infrahub's flexible schema lets the team structure their entire technical infrastructure (including networking devices, servers, and virtual machines) plus their service layer (like connections to customer contracts) exactly how they need. “The model can be entirely modified in every way,” Grard notes.
The Git-native architecture has proven equally transformative. The branching system means team members can work on different changes simultaneously without stepping on each other's toes. Says Grard:
"What I like the most in Infrahub is the fact that it's code-based through Git... It's really a game changer for me that we’re able to design stuff without having to freeze production.”
The numbers that convinced leadership
Explaining technical architecture to executives can be challenging, but the Infrahub proof of concept spoke for itself. Working with the OpsMill team, Eurofiber simulated a typical deployment scenario both with and without Infrahub automation:
"Five days to deploy with the old fashioned way, and with the Infrahub automation process in place, it fell down to 15 minutes or so. That's the kind of thing that talks to everybody."
Today, when Eurofiber needs to provision customer infrastructure, they create a branch in Infrahub, define the platform and virtual machines, have it reviewed, and merge. A GitLab CI/CD pipeline automatically triggers, using OpenTofu and Ansible to provision based on the defined state. The same system manages the full lifecycle, from upgrades and changes to decommissioning.
The cornerstone of an automation system
With Infrahub, Eurofiber has found value beyond initial provisioning as well. The company uses Oxidized to back up configurations for all their network equipment, from switches and routers to firewalls and load balancers. Previously, a backup required manually updating static inventory files every time equipment was added or removed.
Now, they've implemented an artifact generator in Infrahub that dynamically produces device lists and connects those to Oxidized with a simple webhook. "We just have to add or remove equipment in Infrahub, and we can forget about the configuration backup because it's taken care of no matter what."
Grard's advice to other infrastructure engineers?
"Make Infrahub the cornerstone of your automation system. It’s much more than an inventory or simple source of truth. Its true power lies in its automation capabilities.”
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