Talos Linux, an OS built for Kubernetes and hybrid/multi-cloud
Thomas Lochet / December 19, 2022
2 min read
Talos Linux is a Linux operating system designed for Kubernetes. It is minimal, secure and immutable. Talos has no shell, no console and no SSH access. Configuration is done through an API and YAML manifests. It is possible to create a cluster in just 3 minutes.
Talos is not only a simple and lightweight operating system, it also includes a feature that is very useful to me: KubeSpan.
KubeSpan creates a WireGuard network without requiring extra network infrastructure, which is perfect for environments behind a NAT or for hybrid / multi-cloud clusters.
The development cluster is deployed on the FRA-01 and DEU-03 hypervisors. It includes 5 control plane nodes and 5 worker nodes for a total of 120 GB of RAM and 80 CPU cores.
Under heavy load, the cluster can scale out by deploying cloud instances that are ready in 5 minutes. Hetzner Cloud is currently the preferred provider.
Tools by category
GitOps/CI
- ArgoCD
Networking
- Container Network Interface: Flannel
- Ingress Controller: Kong Ingress Controller
- Service Mesh: LinkerD
- Load Balancer: Cloudflare Load Balancer (outside the cluster)
Storage
- Storage Controller: Rook-Ceph (block, filesystem and object)
- Backup Operator: VolSync
Secrets
- Secret Operator: External Secrets
- Secret Provider: Doppler (outside the cluster)
- Certificate Provider: Cert Manager
Monitoring
- Metrics: Grafana Mimir
- Logs: Grafana Loki
Databases
- Postgres Operator: CloudNativePG