openSUSE MicroOS - the OS that does "just one job"

As operating systems get used in more and more places, from VMs and Cloud to IoT and Edge and everything in between, there is a simple problem - no one wants to deal with maintaining all of this new stuff.

And yet, most distributions today are expected to be maintained the same way as they were a decade ago. Sure there are nicer tools to automate things, but that's still a lot of work that someone, be a sysadmin or a tool developer, has to take care of.

Given many of these newer use cases involve an operating system being deployed to do 'just one job', do we always need to deploy distros that could be a swiss-army knife capable of doing anything?

openSUSE MicroOS answers this with a clear 'no', providing a 'general purpose but single service' distribution.

Deploy it, set it up to do what you need, and then forget about it while it will patch, reboot, and repair itself.

Transcript

1. MicroOS The OS that does “just one job” openSUSE contributor Richard Brown rbrown@opensuse.org sysrich on Freenode.net @sysrich
2. About Me • ~15 years with openSUSE & other FOSS communities • >5 years with SUSE • Future Technologies Team Member • openSUSE MicroOS & Kubic
3. Agenda • What MicroOS isn’t • What MicroOS is • What MicroOS could be next
5. Not a Container OS • MicroOS is not designed to be used as the base OS inside containers
6. Tumbleweed is our Container OS registry.opensuse.org/opensuse/tumbleweed latest 73ef0c72c385 2 days ago 90.4 MB registry.opensuse.org/opensuse/busybox latest 188f8aaa3c14 2 days ago 9.4 MB • Use these images for all of your container building with podman build, docker build, buildah and kiwi
7. Not ‘tiny at all costs’ • Size matters – Easier to Deploy – Fewer Updates, Less Risk • MicroOS is designed to be as small as possible, while fulfilling it’s job without compromises.
8. Still Pretty Small • 619MB Bare Metal Install – 165 MB kernel-default – 152 MB kernel-firmware – 68 MB grub2 • 382MB VM Image – 68 MB grub2 – 35 MB kernel-default-base – 10 MB systemd – 288 RPMs, 210 Source Packages
9. Not the same as ‘JeOS’ or ‘Transactional Server’ • JeOS – regular openSUSE, deployed from a very small image, expected to grow as a typical multi-purpose system. • Transactional Server – regular openSUSE with a read only root-filesystem, with atomic updates, expected to be used as a typical multi-purpose system.
10. What is MicroOS?
11. Why is MicroOS?
12. Why is MicroOS? • Computer’s are not just laptops, desktops, and servers any more. • People don’t even use laptops, desktops and servers the same way any more.
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14. IP Webcam Do you have an IP Webcam or similar IoT Device? Ever updated it?
15. IP Webcam There are millions of these devices • 78% of total detected malware activity is due to IoT botnets (2018) • Failed update → Many, many unhappy customers
16. O2 UK Network Outage 2019 • Reliable Updates • Automatic Recovery • Outage can be very expensive • Repair can be very time consuming
18. The New World Virtualisation More Services = More VMs, not more physical hardware Containers Limits incompatibilities, isolates service problems Cloud More Hardware is always just a Credit Card away IoT Single-purpose devices are increasingly prolific eg. Raspberry Pis
19. Regular Linux Isn’t Good Enough • Regular Distros are all like Swiss Army Knives • Lots of Services & Features – Increased chance of incompatibilities between services – A problem with service A can impact B, C, D, etc
20. Single Purpose Systems • VM/Cloud Instance/IoT device deployed to do “just one job” • Installation contains a minimal number of services • Patching often ignored (Rip n’ replace) • More services to use? Just add more VM/Cloud/IoT Devices
21. Hand Crafted isn’t Good Enough • Building custom Single Purpose systems by hand is a lot of work • Still often have issues with Configuration Management • Still need effort to keep patched • Optimising for RAM/CPU/Disk is HARD
22. Nobody is perfect • Even the best designed & maintained systems have flaws • Those flaws need to be prevented from getting in the way of what the system is meant to do • Anything worth doing, is worth being able to undo
23. “I NEVER want to touch a running system” - Every SysAdmin, ever
24. Transactional Updates • Any change to a system should be applied reliably, reproducably, and reversibly • Transactional Updates are: – Atomic – Either fully applied, or not at all – Applied without impacting the running system
25. Health Check • Checks for errors during boot phase – Error with new snapshot: • Rollback to last known working snapshot – Error with already successful booted snapshot: • Try reboot • Shutdown services, inform admin • Needs access to harddisk
26. openSUSE MicroOS openSUSE MicroOS The perfect single-service Linux-based Operating System Salt & Read-Only Root Filesystem Fully automated Transactional Updates Optimised footprint
27. MicroOS Architecture openSUSE MicroOS is a rolling release based on openSUSE Tumbleweed. MicroOS is wholly built, developed, and tested as part of the Tumbleweed release process. Any test failure detected before the release of either Tumbleweed & MicroOS can prevent the release of both distributions.
28. Hardware Requirements ARM: – EFI, either firmware or u-boot X86-64: – UEFI (secure boot) – Legacy Bios Memory (Virtualised): – 512 MB + Workload – 4 GB + Workload
29. Deployment Options DVD/NET ISO w. YaST Customisable, streamlined, installer VM/Vagrant/Cloud/Pi Images Preconfigured, ready to use disk images Yomi Installing directly using Saltstack Ignition For use to configure images/systems on first boot
30. More about Yomi? YouTube openSUSE Conference 2019 Alberto Planas Installing openSUSE only with SaltStack
31. Automatic initial configuration: Ignition • https://github.com/coreos/ignition • Partly replacement of cloud-init – Features: • Partitioning disks • Formatting partitions • Writing files, enable systemd services • Configure users – Runs out of initramfs during first boot – Does not touch sub-systems not mentioned in user supplied config
32. Example Use Cases IoT Single-Service VM Container Host Cluster Node Appliances
33. MicroOS – The Perfect Container Host OS Containers make it very easy to separate the Service/Application from the operating system. Users care about the Service, they shouldn’t care about the OS. MicroOS with it’s ‘self caring’ rolling OS means users just need to worry about picking and updating the containers they choose.
34. We ❤️ Podman Alternative to for standalone container hosts/developer machines No Daemon Supports OCI-containers & Pods Familiar commands eg. – podman pull – podman run
35. registry.opensuse.org We have our own container registry! Built direct from packages in OBS Rebuilt automatically – Always Fresh Signed/Notorised Images • podman pull registry.opensuse.org/opensuse/tumbleweed • podman pull registry.opensuse.org/opensuse/leap
36. My MicroOS Life
37. Debugging - Toolbox Read-only root filesystem: – Reboot needed to install additional tools – Situation after reboot is different then before Toolbox: – Launches small, privileged container – Root filesystem available below /media/root – zypper to install the necessary tools – Persistent between usages
38. Bye bye Leap..
39. openSUSE Kubic openSUSE Kubic is now a MicroOS Derivative, focused specifically on Containers and Kubernetes. Like MicroOS, it is wholly built, developed, and tested as part of the Tumbleweed release process.
40. Kubernetes is special Lots of Moving Parts Containers, Kubernetes, Container Runtime, and base Operating System all need to be updated regularly Containers at Scale Kubernetes is designed to run 100s-1000s of containers at once Large Clusters Kubernetes clusters can span dozens or hundreds of physical machines or VMs
41. Kubic – The perfect Kubernetes OS Inheriting all the usual benefits of openSUSE MicroOS, with optimisations for Containers and Kubernetes, including – Fully Integrated kubeadm – CRI-O Container Runtime – Kured for automating reboots across the cluster – Kubic-Control – alternative cluster bootstrapping tool
42. MicroOS Desktop • All of this makes perfect sense for ‘servers’, why not desktops? • Auto updated base OS plus Desktop Environment • Apps from Flatpak • Currently in [ALPHA]
44. MicroOS Leap 15.2 • All the benefits of MicrOS but based on the Leap 15.2 codebase • COMING SOON