Kairos v2.2 Released, What’s New?

Kairos, a cloud-native meta-Linux distribution, brings the power of the public cloud to on-premises environments. With Kairos, users can build their own cloud infrastructure while maintaining complete control and avoiding vendor lock-in. This distribution facilitates the creation and management of Kubernetes clusters, empowering users with a comprehensive solution.

Key Features of Kairos v2.2

By utilizing Kairos, users can establish an immutable infrastructure that remains consistent and free from drift through atomic upgrades. The entire lifecycle of the cluster can be managed seamlessly with Kubernetes, from initial setup to future upgrades. Additionally, Kairos enables the creation of multi-node, single clusters that span across regions, ensuring maximum flexibility and scalability.

Introduction of Kairos v2.2 Release

Kairos delighted to announce the release of Kairos v2.2, featuring the latest updates and improvements to the project. This release marks a significant milestone as it encompasses changes to internal core components and enhanced support for the ARM architecture.

Notable Changes in Kairos v2.2

The latest release introduces updates to the core components of Kairos, including substantial refactorings and bug fixes. To enhance user experience and reduce maintenance efforts, the elemental CLI and kairos-agent functionalities have been merged.

Consequently, the kairos-agent now manages the lifecycle of Kairos, handling upgrades, setup, and delegating configuration to specific providers that implement the required configuration (e.g., k3s). The kairos-agent also facilitates the direct execution of cloud-init stages, and a new –debug flag has been added to simplify troubleshooting. Additionally, user-facing commands of the Kairos CLI have been renamed and moved to kairosctl.

Another noteworthy enhancement is the support for multi-architecture images in the Kairos agent. Users can now specify container images for different platforms within the same tag during upgrades.

Kairos has also consolidated its support for the ARM architecture, including the introduction of generic iso ARM images for development or use in VMs. Moreover, support for Nvidia AGX Orin has been added. RPI images now come with LVM, making the OEM partition available similar to the x86_64 flavors. However, note that the reset function is not currently working, but this issue will be addressed in a future patch release.

Additionally, Ubuntu has been added to the available RPI images. A pure, Alpine flavor that operates independently from systemd is also in progress and will be released soon.

For more information on future developments, please refer to Kairos Roadmap.

For a comprehensive list of changes, please consult the Changelog.

Reasons to Consider (Use Cases) Kairos

Kairos offers a diverse range of use cases, from Kubernetes applications to appliances and more. Users have the flexibility to provision nodes with their custom images or utilize Kairos releases. Furthermore, Kairos simplifies day-2 operations such as node upgrades, providing the advantages of a unified, cloud-native approach to OS management.

Resources

Kairos Documentation

Kairos GitHub

Muhammad Umair

Muhammad Umair (co-founder) is a highly skilled technical writer with over 3 years of experience in creating clear, concise, and engaging content. With a strong background in website and social media management, he understands the importance of effective communication and brand representation in the digital landscape.