de.NBI Crate - A software container registry

de.NBI Crate is a sovereign, open-source container registry platform that empowers research communities to share, manage, and reuse containerised software, workflows, and services with confidence. Built and operated within the de.NBI Cloud, it provides a robust, geo-replicated infrastructure for hosting OCI-compliant images, ensuring high availability, resilience, and long-term sustainability.

The service supports diverse computing environments, including Kubernetes clusters, cloud platforms, and HPC systems, enabling researchers to seamlessly integrate their software into scalable and reproducible pipelines. Through consistent metadata, image tagging, and catalogue curation, de.NBI Crate simplifies image discovery and promotes transparent software supply chains.

Designed for openness and interoperability, de.NBI Crate integrates federated identity management and supports vulnerability scanning and Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) to enhance security and trust. Users benefit from a vendor-neutral infrastructure that preserves data and service sovereignty while reducing dependence on public and commercial registries, which increasingly expose our services to external constraints, including rate limitations, changing pricing models, shifting terms of use, and a lack of data sovereignty. These factors introduce operational uncertainty and make long-term sustainability difficult to guarantee.

With its focus on sustainability, reliability, and community governance, de.NBI Crate is a foundational building block for modern research infrastructure, enabling collaborative software development, secure distribution, and reproducible scientific computation across disciplines and platforms.

This is a planned service and will be rolled out fully in the coming days. The registry can be accessed at https://crate.bi.denbi.de.