In this tutorial, you will learn how to build a metal-as-a-service (MAAS) infrastructure using Intel-based computers. MAAS is an open-source platform that allows you to manage and deploy your bare-metal servers quickly and easily. With the help of Intel AMT, you can remotely start, stop, and power cycle your servers. We will also be using Ansible, a popular automation tool, to automate tasks on all the computers simultaneously. By the end of this tutorial, you will have a scalable and efficient infrastructure that can handle various workloads.

What is a metal-as-a-service?

A metal-as-a-service, or MAAS, is a software-defined infrastructure management platform that allows you to quickly and easily manage your bare-metal servers at scale. Essentially, MAAS provides a way to treat your physical servers like cloud resources by abstracting their hardware details and making them easier to manage.

Using MAAS, you can deploy a range of operating systems and applications on your servers, either in a public or private cloud environment. This means that you can spin up new servers as needed, without having to manually install and configure them. MAAS automates the process of provisioning, commissioning, and decommissioning servers, making it a powerful tool for managing large-scale data center infrastructures.

With MAAS, you can also ensure that your servers are always up to date and properly configured. You can define custom configurations for your servers, and MAAS will automatically apply those configurations as needed. This helps to ensure that all of your servers are running the same software and configurations, which can simplify troubleshooting and maintenance tasks.

Overall, MAAS provides a powerful way to manage your physical servers at scale, and it can be especially useful for organizations that need to deploy and manage large numbers of servers in a flexible and efficient way.