Minimal Environment

This guide walks you through deploying the smallest viable CobaltCore environment: one control plane node running the Kubernetes control plane and OpenStack services, and one hypervisor node running KVM virtual machines.

This is not a production configuration - it has no high availability and no redundant storage. It is suitable for exploration, development, and learning how the components fit together.

What you will deploy

┌─────────────────────────────────┐
│  Control Plane Node             │
│  Kubernetes · OpenStack (Helm)  │
│  Ceph (single node)             │
└──────────────┬──────────────────┘
               │
┌──────────────▼──────────────────┐
│  Hypervisor Node                │
│  GardenLinux · KVM · libvirt    │
│  Hypervisor Operator agents     │
└─────────────────────────────────┘

Prerequisites

• Two machines (physical or virtual), each with:
  • 8+ CPUs, 32 GB RAM, 200 GB disk
  • Linux OS (Ubuntu 22.04 or equivalent)
  • Network connectivity between them
• kubectl installed on your workstation
• helm v3 installed
• Basic familiarity with Kubernetes

Step 1: Bootstrap the Kubernetes cluster

CobaltCore uses Gardener for cluster lifecycle management in production, but for a minimal setup you can use any conformant Kubernetes distribution (k3s, kubeadm, kind with enough resources).

The control plane must be reachable from the hypervisor node.

See Platform - Bootstrap for details on how CobaltCore clusters are set up in production.

Step 2: Install the Hypervisor Operator

The Hypervisor Operator manages hypervisor node lifecycle. Install it into your cluster:

helm repo add cobaltcore https://cobaltcore-dev.github.io/charts
helm repo update
helm install hypervisor-operator cobaltcore/hypervisor-operator \
  --namespace cobaltcore-system \
  --create-namespace

See Compute - Hypervisor for configuration options.

Step 3: Register the hypervisor node

Create a Hypervisor resource to register your compute node:

apiVersion: kvm.cloud.sap/v1
kind: Hypervisor
metadata:
  name: hypervisor-01
spec:
  lifecycleEnabled: true
  highAvailability: false
  version: latest

Apply it and verify the node is discovered:

kubectl apply -f hypervisor.yaml
kubectl get hypervisors

Step 4: Deploy storage (single-node Ceph)

For a minimal setup, deploy Ceph in single-replica mode via Rook:

helm repo add rook-release https://charts.rook.io/release
helm repo update

helm install rook-ceph rook-release/rook-ceph \
  --namespace rook-ceph \
  --create-namespace

Then deploy a minimal single-node CephCluster. See Storage - Rook for the full cluster configuration.

Step 5: Deploy OpenStack

OpenStack services are deployed via Helm. A minimal configuration enables Nova, Neutron, Cinder, Keystone, and Glance:

helm install openstack cobaltcore/openstack \
  --namespace openstack \
  --create-namespace \
  --values minimal-values.yaml

See OpenStack for service-level configuration.

Step 6: Verify

Check that all components are running:

kubectl get pods -n cobaltcore-system
kubectl get pods -n rook-ceph
kubectl get pods -n openstack
kubectl get hypervisors

Access the OpenStack API endpoint and create a test VM to confirm end-to-end functionality.

Next steps

• Full production deployment - add HA, stretched storage, and the management frontend
• Compute - Hypervisor - configure hypervisor agents and HA
• Storage - Ceph - tune storage pools and replication
• OpenStack - configure individual services