In this talk, we will introduce Kairos, an open-source project that aims to create immutable Operating Systems designed for Kubernetes. This includes a toolset that simplifies operations at the edge in a cloud-native way.

Edge computing has become increasingly popular due to its ability to save costs by processing information closer to the data before sending filtered and computed information to a centralized application or data warehouse hosted in the cloud. Kubernetes is an ideal solution for edge computing because it natively builds components that facilitate the lifecycle management of modern edge applications.

However, as we scale the number of edge locations, we face operational challenges, such as interacting with cluster configurations at scale without creating unique configurations for each location, ensuring security for remote clusters and applications, upgrading Kubernetes clusters without specific domain knowledge, and minimizing disruptions during maintenance windows for smaller form factor hardware.

Kairos acts as an engine delivering immutable Kubernetes-enabled Linux OS from OCI conformant container images. It provides unique capabilities such as VPN peer-to-peer mesh, a distributed ledger to automate Kubernetes cluster bootstrapping and coordination, and zero-touch provisioning with a QR code scan. But more importantly, it uses a declarative model backed by Kubernetes CRDs. It manages distributed Kubernetes operations at the edge from a centralized Kubernetes cluster.

In this presentation, we will explain the foundations and concepts of Kairos and demonstrate its capabilities.