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

🛸 Where will you find us this May?

May 19-20. DevOpsDays Geneva
We're coming there to meet our awesome friends from Hidora (who happen to be conference organizers!). We'll be soaking up knowledge at the talks and checking out sponsor booths - but the real value is meeting you! Let's grab a drink or coffee and brainstorm something awesome together.

May 21. Cloud Native Prague
Andrei Kvapil will talk about LINSTOR on Talos Linux.

May 26. Tech Internals Conf Berlin
Andrei Kvapil is coming with a brand-new talk "Platformize It! Building a Unified and Extensible Platform Framework with Kubernetes API Aggregation Layer"

And sure, we'll be for you online. Pick a time that works for you https://zcal.co/t/aenix, hashtag #may.

🔴 CNCF On-Demand Webinar: GPU-Powered AI on VMs, Kubernetes & Bare Metal with Cozystack

Speaker: Andrei Kvapil (a.k.a. kvaps), Ænix CEO & Cozystack maintainer

When: May 22, whole day
Link: https://tinyurl.com/yf9jcfst

In the webinar, Andrei will explain how to deploy Kubernetes clusters and virtual machines in Cozystack, allocate GPU resources to them, and run Stable Diffusion.

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

🚀 Cozystack Recognized in CNCF's CNAI Landscape!

We're thrilled to share that Cozystack has been added to the Cloud Native AI (CNAI) Landscape by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)! This is a significant validation of our work in bridging cloud-native infrastructure with AI workloads.

Why This Matters:
• Industry Recognition: Being featured alongside major players confirms Cozystack's role in shaping the future of AI infrastructure
• Technical Validation: Highlights our capabilities in GPU provisioning, scalable Kubernetes deployments, and platform engineering for AI/ML
• Ecosystem Growth: Strengthens our position in the open source cloud-native community

A huge thank you to our contributors, users, and the CNCF community for making this possible! This is just the beginning of our journey to simplify AI infrastructure deployment.

Link: https://landscape.cncf.io/?group=cnai

🦾 GPU-powered AI on VMs, Kubernetes & Bare Metal with Cozystack: Webinar by Andrei Kvapil

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

00:00 What is Cozystack?
03:47 Tenant system in Cozystack
09:38 Deploying a virtual machine
13:05 Cozystack API demo
14:48 GPU cluster configuration
21:53 GPU-accelerated VM deployment
26:38 Kubernetes cluster deployment
35:20 GPU-enabled Kubernetes cluster
37:51 Deploying Stable Diffusion on Kubernetes

Documentation: https://cozystack.io/docs/operations/virtualization/gpu

🦾 How Cozystack Was Born: The Philosophy Behind Its Architecture

Word to Andrey Kvapil, Creator of Cozystack and Founder of Ænix:

Well, I’ve long been passionate about the idea of building a cloud platform with a Kubernetes-native API interface.

I think the core ideas started to take shape when I was working on the kubefarm project. But later, I realized that the folks at Talos had implemented many of the things I was aiming for even better than I did five years earlier. So we decided to join the Talos community instead of developing our own solution from scratch.

Many of the technologies we use today were already in play back then: Kubernetes-in-Kubernetes, LINSTOR, Cilium, PXE boot, and more.

Some of my insights also came from developing the Deckhouse platform, where I introduced a virtualization layer using KubeVirt. That experience made it clear how important reproducibility and repeatability are. It also showed how difficult it can be to support multiple distributions and out-of-tree forks.

That’s why we have this motto:

If we build a platform feature that could be useful in an upstream project, we prefer to contribute it there rather than keep it in the platform.

This principle actually inspired by the KubeVirt razor 😅

So, piece by piece, Cozystack was shaped from different technologies and ideas over time. All that was left was to unify them into a single product.

Cozystack started as an attempt to package and deliver our accumulated experience as a ready-to-use solution for a wider audience. It brings together all the cozy technologies we’ve relied on for years under one product.

We’re deeply grateful to all the opensource project we use, and we truly collaborate with their maintainers. We’ve also built our own cozy community across it, and we’re immensely thankful for it.

It’s important to understand that Cozystack began as a self-bootstrapped project, without any external investment. So going to production and generating real value was our primary goal at the beginning.

In this article Andrei Kvapil explores how virtualization has evolved from DIY hypervisors to turnkey managed platforms and why this shift is critical for modern infrastructure.

Key takeaways:
🔹 The rise of "as-a-service" models – Why enterprises are ditching complex self-managed setups
🔹 Local providers’ advantage – How regional players outperform hyperscalers in digital sovereignty and compliance
🔹 The new stack – Kubernetes, lightweight VMs, and automation redefining virtualization

→ Read full article