Provision and manage bare metal, anywhere

Standardize infrastructure management using the same API-centric, declarative configuration and automation approach pioneered by the Kubernetes community.

Get Started

What is Tinkerbell?

Tinkerbell is a bare metal provisioning engine, built and maintained by the Tinkerbell Community. The core Tinkerbell stack is comprised of the following services: Smee, Hegel, Hook, and Tink.

How Does it Work?

Tinkerbell has a few core components: a DHCP server (Smee), a metadata service (Hegel), an in-memory operating system installation environment (HookOS) and a workflow engine (Tink Server/Worker). The workflow engine is comprised of a controller, server and worker. The server and agent communicate over gRPC. kubectl is used to create workflows along with hardware and template objects. There are also a few optional components: 2 Power and Boot services (PBnJ and Rufio) that communicate with BMCs. A Cluster API provider (CAPT) for provisioning and managing Kubernetes clusters.

Core Components

The Tinkerbell stack is comprised of the following core components.

Tink

Workflow Server, Worker, and Controller

Smee

DHCP & iPXE Server

Hegel

Metadata Service

Rufio

BMC Interactions

Hook

Operating System Installation Environment (OSIE)