Cozystack v0.24 Release: PXE boot, our own HTTP server

Main changes
- We learned how to PXE-boot nodes directly from the platform, using smee (the DHCP server from Tinkerbell).
- Updated Grafana, implemented plugin installation at the build stage instead of at runtime as before.
- Updated cert-manager.
- Added hooks to change the size and type of virtual machines.
- Replaced darkhttpd with our own HTTP server.

For more details, check out the project on GitHub.

Feel free to join our community spaces
- Telegram
- Slack
- Community Meeting Calendar

Our founder and Cozystack core maintainer, Andrei Kvapil, at the LINSTOR Community Meeting

🗓 March 13th | 11 AM ET / 5 PM CET

Speakers & Topics
✔️ Andrei Kvapil: LINSTOR on Talos Linux: A robust base for Cozystack
✔️ Joel Colledge: DRBD resync without replication
✔️ Johannes Khoshnazar-Thoma: WinDRBD 1.2 news

Join us live on the 13th on the platform of your choice:
📌 Get reminded on YT Live
📌 Register in Zoom

💪💪💪 Cozystack Becomes a CNCF Sandbox Project

On February 28, members of the CNCF Technical Oversight Committee completed their voting and unanimously accepted Cozystack, a platform for building private clouds and PaaS, into the CNCF Sandbox. The project is currently undergoing the onboarding process. Let’s break down what this means in practice, what Cozystack is, and what the CNCF Sandbox represents.

What Does It Mean for Users?
Transferring the project to the CNCF guarantees all Cozystack users that the platform will always be available under the Apache 2.0 license and will not suffer the fate of projects like Mongo, Redis, Terraform, and Vault, whose licenses were changed to closed-source and no longer comply with the Open Source Initiative criteria. From this point forward, the rights to Cozystack belong to the non-profit industry organization, the CNCF.

Moreover, inclusion in the CNCF provides an opportunity to engage a broad engineering community in the development and use of Cozystack, making project management more transparent. Expanding the base of contributors and users will, in turn, significantly accelerate the platform's development and the exploration of a wide range of use cases.

Andrey Kvapil, CEO of Ænix and creator of Cozystack:

"I believe in honest and genuine open source, in the tools we use to build the platform, and I am happy that we can be useful to the community. In just one year, our small team of excellent engineers, with the support of our clients and the open-source community, has created a project worthy of inclusion in the CNCF. This is truly a significant achievement. Thank you to everyone who believed in us and supported us throughout this time. We will continue to improve the platform and plan to apply for CNCF Incubating status this fall. From an engineering perspective, we are already a mature project and ready for this. The main task now is to refine the project management process and community interaction."

Matthew Robin, CEO & Founder of Hidora:

"Cozystack represents a significant advancement in simplifying complex cloud infrastructure deployment. Its integration into the CNCF Sandbox marks an important milestone that will accelerate its adoption and enrich its ecosystem through community collaboration. We are confident that Cozystack will play a key role in democratizing cloud-native technologies for businesses of all sizes."

Kingdon Barrett, FluxCD & Cozystack maintainer:

“Cozystack combines cutting edge open source cloud native technologies in a way that I could probably set up myself, the hard way, if I wanted to spend 6 months figuring out how they fit together. It's Talos Linux configured as a cloud on bare metal, ready in half an hour or so!”

Andrei's Kvapil talk from LINSTOR community meeting "LINSTOR on Talos Linux: A Robust Base for Cozystack"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaQySmJsmrU

Latest Cozystack community meeting 2025-03-27

🎥 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGUC1OpTMQc

Cozystack is a free PaaS and framework for building clouds | CNCF Sandbox Project

Agenda and notes

- Migrating to CNCF
- New mailing list
- New meeting in zoom
- [discuss] Success stories and failures
- [discuss] Cozystack for pet projects - any examples?
- [discuss] Cozystack cluster in multi-dc configuration
- [discuss] In line with our focus on stabilization: how should we approach e2e testing?
- [nbykov] Modular base setup
- [discuss] Community-driven docs

Join the community:
Telegram group t.me/cozystack
Slack group (Get invite at https://slack.kubernetes.io)

Cozystack resources:
https://cozystack.io
https://cozystack.io/docs/get-started
https://cozystack.io/blog
https://github.com/aenix-io/cozystack

Ænix resources
https://aenix.io
https://t.me/aenix_io
https://t.me/aenix_community

See you at KubeCon 1-3 April!

Where: startup area, green zone
Booth S693

We haven’t shared much about Cozystack’s new features lately, even though we’ve released six new versions over the past month and a half: 0.24, 0.25, 0.26, 0.27, 0.28, and 0.29. Let’s take a closer look at the changes, starting from the latest release and going back to version 0.24.

https://blog.aenix.io/updates-to-the-open-source-platform-cozystack-0-24-0-29-d47788ab7ebe

We've raised

Ænix, the company behind the open-source Cozystack platform, today announced a $300,000 seed investment round by Prospective Technologies, a venture capital firm known for backing cutting-edge developer tools and early-stage tech companies, including imgproxy, Qase, and DBeaver.

This funding will fuel the growth of Cozystack, an open-source platform that simplifies the deployment and management of virtual machines, containers, databases, bare-metal applications, and AI workloads. Designed for enterprises and service providers seeking digital sovereignty, Cozystack provides modern APIs to manage on-premises hardware, enhancing security and compliance for regulated industries.

https://blog.aenix.io/ænix-secures-300k-seed-investment-from-prospective-technologies-to-accelerate-open-source-cloud-f05dbb4c7227

🚀 Supercharge Your AI/ML Workloads with GPU-Powered VMs in Cozystack!

The latest Cozystack release brings native GPU support for virtual machines, letting you run AI/ML applications on 100% open-source infrastructure. Just plug in a physical GPU to your node, and pass it through to your VM — no vendor lock-in, no compromises.

What’s next? We’re already working on:
🔹 vGPU support (fractional GPU sharing)
🔹 Tenant GPU access via K8s operator for AI workloads in multi-tenant clusters

📖 Check out the docs to get started: cozystack.io/docs/operations/virtualization/gpu

What is Cozystack
Cozystack is a free PaaS and framework for building clouds that unifies VMs, containers, and GPU workloads under Kubernetes. With KubeVirt integration, multi-tenancy, and bare-metal simplicity, it lets enterprises deploy AI, databases, or edge apps without vendor lock-in. And service providers can turn hardware into a cloud business: sell managed K8s, VMs and GPU services. CNCF Sandbox project.

🎥 CNCF On demand webinar: Kubernetes is the new Skynet or the rise of Kubernetes automation

Date and time:
CEST: Apr 24, 9:00 AM — Apr 25, 9:00 AM
PT: Apr 24, 12:00 AM — Apr 25, 12:00 AM

Webinar topics and agenda:
What if we had a Platform able to operate and pilot itself, with a fraction of human-based operations?

In this talk, Andrei's knowledge and developer experience will shed light on the tools being able to execute complex tasks such as installing Kubernetes on bare metal servers (Talos Linux), tools being able to satisfy all the complex conditions of orchestrating VM's (KubeVirt), till to operate Kubernetes clusters at large scale.

Speaker:
Andrei Kvapil, Ænix CEO and Founder

Join: https://community.cncf.io/e/mg86fe

Tap 'Login to RSVP' to confirm attendance + calendar invite

Sergey Pronin (ex-Percona) recently published a detailed comparison in his personal blog, evaluating various solutions for running and managing databases in Kubernetes. He reviewed four platforms: KubeBlocks, KubeDB, Cozystack, and Percona Everest.

While all options focus solely on database provisioning, Cozystack stands out as the only platform enabling full-fledged cloud deployment—going beyond just databases to offer a complete, ready-to-use cloud solution.

https://spron.in/blog/tpost/gixb8cuo41-comparing-open-source-cloud-native-dbaas

Latest Cozystack community meeting

🎥 https://youtu.be/qckLvE6K0F0

Cozystack is a free PaaS and framework for building clouds | CNCF Sandbox Project

Agenda and notes

- News: Release v0.30.0.
- GPU support.
- News: new test infrastructure from CNCF. We’re actively working on CI, and it helped us advance GPU support. We’re also able to work with ARM now.
- State of Kubernetes Certified. https://t.me/cozystack/10620
- Are there new successful deployments? Come and tell us about your Cozystack cluster. (this should be a regular topic)
- What’s your current Cozystack version and why it is what it is? It would be nice to hear both those who follow the edge and those who are several versions behind.
- Do we need out-of-the-box integration with proxmox? One community member is working on it, but in a separate branch. We can take an effort to merge it in a neat way, if there’s demand.

Open Floor:
- [kirill] tracing solution for Cozystack
- [kirill] DevSecOps
- [nbykov] gpu-operator support in Talos Linux. GPU for pods. GPU for vms
- [femi] Ever wondered if we can delete cozystack deployment and reapply it, just incase.. doing kubectl delete -f ordinarily don't work.
- [femi] changing tenant configuration should updated all components

Join the community:
Telegram group t.me/cozystack
Slack group (Get invite at https://slack.kubernetes.io)

Cozystack resources:
https://cozystack.io
https://cozystack.io/docs/get-started
https://cozystack.io/blog
https://github.com/aenix-io/cozystack

Ænix resources
https://aenix.io
https://t.me/aenix_io
https://t.me/aenix_community

🗜 The CNCF webinar is now live! Andrei Kvapil: Kubernetes is the new Skynet or the rise of Kubernetes automation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBruFVdY6Fs

Kubernetes is famous as the container orchestrator—but lately, it’s becoming the orchestrator of everything. Crossplane for external resources, operators for databases, and beyond.

What if you could deploy a platform that runs itself—with minimal human intervention? In this talk, Andrei Kvapil will break down the tools making this possible:

- Talos Linux for provisioning Kubernetes on bare metal
- KubeVirt for orchestrating VMs seamlessly
- Cluster API and Kamaji for large-scale cluster management

Useful links
https://cozystack.io
https://aenix.io
https://t.me/cozystack
https://github.com/cozystack

Struggling to install Talos Linux on locked-down cloud and hosting providers? Many of them only offer pre-configured servers with limited OS options, making Talos installation seem impossible.

In this guide, we reveal a universal approach that works on any infrastructure. We'll walk through the two critical phases: first, how to bootstrap the Talos Linux environment on restricted systems, and second, how to properly configure and apply your machine-config file to get a fully functional Kubernetes node.

This method opens up Talos' security and efficiency benefits even on 'unconventional' hosting platforms.

https://blog.aenix.io/a-simple-way-to-install-talos-linux-on-any-machine-with-any-provider-c652b35b902e

Latest Cozystack community meeting

https://youtu.be/jMPn0mmldfE

Cozystack is a free PaaS and framework for building clouds | CNCF Sandbox Project

Agenda and notes

- CNCF Webinar: Kubernetes is the new Skynet or the rise of Kubernetes automation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBruFVdY6Fs
- New Cozystack versions, and version strategy: Release Candidates, Backports, Patch releases
- Upcoming changes overview: GPU support, Automatic removal for disabled components, HelmReleases reconciliation logic for FluxCD, New LINSTOR handles ZFS snapshots better

Open Floor:
- [nbykov] Cozystack Store as a way to handle Cozystack components
- [isklimov/katamarina] Cozystack bundle for simple install webgui on just one linux VM without Talos OS. (needed to simplify demo for new customers)
- [discuss] How to improve tests
- [discuss] Automatic updates for the components in Github
- Pull Requests that need attention: https://github.com/cozystack/cozystack/pulls
- Bug scrub: https://github.com/cozystack/cozystack/issues

Join the community:
Telegram group t.me/cozystack
Slack group (Get invite at https://slack.kubernetes.io)

Cozystack resources:
https://cozystack.io
https://cozystack.io/docs/get-started
https://cozystack.io/blog
https://github.com/aenix-io/cozystack

Ænix resources
https://aenix.io
https://t.me/aenix_io
https://t.me/aenix_community

Free 50-Min Engineering Jam Session with Andrei Kvapil
No pitches. No fluff. Just real technical insights and problem-solving

What’s on the table:
🗜 Tear apart your infra (cloud, k8s, or bare metal – GPUs included)
🗜 Problem-solve databases, virtualization, or scaling nightmares
🗜 See how Cozystack + CNCF OSS actually works under the hood (and when it’s not the right fit)

About Andrei:
Built Cozystack (CNCF Sandbox). Been breaking clouds since k8s was still wearing diapers. Contributed to Cilium/KubeVirt/Linstor when they weren’t cool yet.

👉 Hit him up at aeinx.io/contact – subject line “engineering jam” + your toughest problem.

❤️ Please like and share this post with friends who are tired of struggling with infrastructure puzzles

💪 Ænix and Cozystack at Tech Internals Conf

26 May 2025
Berlin, Germany

👉 Don’t Miss Our Talk!
"Platformize It! Our experience creating an unified and extensible platform framework using Kubernetes" by Andrei Kvapil, CEO of Ænix

👉 Visit our booth to:
✅ Challenge your cloud infrastructure
✅ Discuss K8s-powered reliability

👉 Talk with Andrei (a.k.a. kvaps) about K8s, KubeVirt, networks, virtualization and platform engineering.

See you soon: https://internals.tech/berlin/2025

Good morning, Cozystack community!

We've recently written and updated a few documentation pages, hope you'll find them useful:

— Hardware requirements: completly new, explains what you'll need for PoC and production
— Deploy and Configure Cozystack: few improvements
— Cozystack bundles: overview and comparison: a completely new guide on choosing Cozystack bundle for your setup
— LINSTOR DRBD Configuration: updated
— Configuring a Dedicated Network for LINSTOR: new guide
— Configuring a Dedicated Network for Distributed Storage with LINSTOR: new guide

🗜🗜🗜 Watch This Before You Debug K8s: Reconciliation Loop Explained in 3 Minutes

by Andrei Kvapil (a.k.a. kvaps)

🎥 Latest Cozystack community meeting: ARM, GPU Demo, API demo

https://youtu.be/q7KSHsM_V6Y

Cozystack is a free PaaS and framework for building clouds | CNCF Sandbox Project

Agenda and notes

- GPU demo
- Cozystack Helper Bot: AI-powered telegram bot for the community, presented by Alexander Volinski
- Littlegreen: running AI worfklows with Cozystack, presented by Zdenek Janda
- сozystack/community repo: new place for enhancement proposals
- State of ARM support
- Cozystack Summer Hackathon
- Remove the distro-hosted bundle, add iaas-full instead? See https://cozystack.io/docs/guides/bundles/
- FerretDB just released v2.2 and there are a lot of improvements. Maybe someone from the community would like to update the FerretDb version in Cozystack. Now we have only 1.24
- Enhancement proposals, etc.
- Cozystack API demo + explanations

Open Floor:
- Gateway API

Join the community:
Telegram group t.me/cozystack
Slack group (Get invite at https://slack.kubernetes.io)

Cozystack resources:
https://cozystack.io
https://cozystack.io/docs/get-started
https://cozystack.io/blog
https://github.com/aenix-io/cozystack

Ænix resources
https://aenix.io
https://t.me/aenix_io
https://t.me/aenix_community