Introduction

• 1: What is Talos?
• 2: Quickstart
• 3: Getting Started
• 4: Production Clusters
• 5: System Requirements
• 6: What's New in Talos 1.5
• 7: Support Matrix

1 - What is Talos?

Talos is a container optimized Linux distro; a reimagining of Linux for distributed systems such as Kubernetes. Designed to be as minimal as possible while still maintaining practicality. For these reasons, Talos has a number of features unique to it:

• it is immutable
• it is atomic
• it is ephemeral
• it is minimal
• it is secure by default
• it is managed via a single declarative configuration file and gRPC API

Talos can be deployed on container, cloud, virtualized, and bare metal platforms.

Why Talos

In having less, Talos offers more. Security. Efficiency. Resiliency. Consistency.

All of these areas are improved simply by having less.

2 - Quickstart

Local Docker Cluster

The easiest way to try Talos is by using the CLI (talosctl) to create a cluster on a machine with docker installed.

Prerequisites

talosctl

Download talosctl (macOS or Linux):

brew install siderolabs/tap/talosctl

kubectl

Download kubectl via one of methods outlined in the documentation.

Create the Cluster

Now run the following:

talosctl cluster create

You can explore using Talos API commands:

talosctl dashboard --nodes 10.5.0.2

Verify that you can reach Kubernetes:

kubectl get nodes -o wide
NAME                           STATUS   ROLES    AGE    VERSION          INTERNAL-IP   EXTERNAL-IP   OS-IMAGE                 KERNEL-VERSION   CONTAINER-RUNTIME
talos-default-controlplane-1   Ready    master   115s   v1.28.3   10.5.0.2      <none>        Talos (v1.5.5)   <host kernel>    containerd://1.5.5
talos-default-worker-1         Ready    <none>   115s   v1.28.3   10.5.0.3      <none>        Talos (v1.5.5)   <host kernel>    containerd://1.5.5

Destroy the Cluster

When you are all done, remove the cluster:

talosctl cluster destroy

3 - Getting Started

This document will walk you through installing a simple Talos Cluster with a single control plane node and one or more worker nodes, explaining some of the concepts.

If this is your first use of Talos Linux, we recommend the Quickstart first, to quickly create a local virtual cluster in containers on your workstation.

For a production cluster, extra steps are needed - see Production Notes.

Regardless of where you run Talos, the steps to create a Kubernetes cluster are:

• boot machines off the Talos Linux image
• define the endpoint for the Kubernetes API and generate your machine configurations
• configure Talos Linux by applying machine configurations to the machines
• configure talosctl
• bootstrap Kubernetes

Prerequisites

talosctl

talosctl is a CLI tool which interfaces with the Talos API. Talos Linux has no SSH access: talosctl is the tool you use to interact with the operating system on the machines.

Install talosctl before continuing:

curl -sL https://talos.dev/install | sh

Note: If you boot systems off the ISO, Talos on the ISO image runs in RAM and acts as an installer. The version of talosctl that is used to create the machine configurations controls the version of Talos Linux that is installed on the machines - NOT the image that the machines are initially booted off. For example, booting a machine off the Talos 1.3.7 ISO, but creating the initial configuration with talosctl binary of version 1.4.1, will result in a machine running Talos Linux version 1.4.1.

It is advisable to use the same version of talosctl as the version of the boot media used.

Network access

This guide assumes that the systems being installed have outgoing access to the internet, allowing them to pull installer and container images, query NTP, etc. If needed, see the documentation on registry proxies, local registries, and airgapped installation.

Acquire the Talos Linux image and boot machines

The most general way to install Talos Linux is to use the ISO image.

The latest ISO image can be found on the Github Releases page:

• X86: https://github.com/siderolabs/talos/releases/download/v1.5.5/metal-amd64.iso
• ARM64: https://github.com/siderolabs/talos/releases/download/v1.5.5/metal-arm64.iso

When booted from the ISO, Talos will run in RAM and will not install to disk until provided a configuration. Thus, it is safe to boot any machine from the ISO.

At this point, you should:

• boot one machine off the ISO to be the control plane node
• boot one or more machines off the same ISO to be the workers

Alternative Booting

For network booting and self-built media, see Production Notes. There are installation methods specific to specific platforms, such as pre-built AMIs for AWS - check the specific Installation Guides.)

Define the Kubernetes Endpoint

In order to configure Kubernetes, Talos needs to know what the endpoint of the Kubernetes API Server will be.

Because we are only creating a single control plane node in this guide, we can use the control plane node directly as the Kubernetes API endpoint.

Identify the IP address or DNS name of the control plane node that was booted above, and convert it to a fully-qualified HTTPS URL endpoint address for the Kubernetes API Server which (by default) runs on port 6443. The endpoint should be formatted like:

• https://192.168.0.2:6443
• https://kube.mycluster.mydomain.com:6443

NOTE: For a production cluster, you should have three control plane nodes, and have the endpoint allocate traffic to all three - see Production Notes.

Accessing the Talos API

Administrative tasks are performed by calling the Talos API (usually with talosctl) on Talos Linux control plane nodes - thus, ensure your control plane node is directly reachable on TCP port 50000 from the workstation where you run the talosctl client. This may require changing firewall rules or cloud provider access-lists.

For production configurations, see Production Notes.

Configure Talos Linux

When Talos boots without a configuration, such as when booting off the Talos ISO, it enters maintenance mode and waits for a configuration to be provided.

A configuration can be passed in on boot via kernel parameters or metadata servers. See Production Notes.

Unlike traditional Linux, Talos Linux is not configured by SSHing to the server and issuing commands. Instead, the entire state of the machine is defined by a machine config file which is passed to the server. This allows machines to be managed in a declarative way, and lends itself to GitOps and modern operations paradigms. The state of a machine is completely defined by, and can be reproduced from, the machine configuration file.

To generate the machine configurations for a cluster, run this command on the workstation where you installed talosctl:

talosctl gen config <cluster-name> <cluster-endpoint>

cluster-name is an arbitrary name, used as a label in your local client configuration. It should be unique in the configuration on your local workstation.

cluster-endpoint is the Kubernetes Endpoint you constructed from the control plane node’s IP address or DNS name above. It should be a complete URL, with https:// and port.

For example:

$ talosctl gen config mycluster https://192.168.0.2:6443
generating PKI and tokens
created /Users/taloswork/controlplane.yaml
created /Users/taloswork/worker.yaml
created /Users/taloswork/talosconfig

When you run this command, three files are created in your current directory:

• controlplane.yaml
• worker.yaml
• talosconfig

The .yaml files are Machine Configs: they describe everything from what disk Talos should be installed on, to network settings. The controlplane.yaml file also describes how Talos should form a Kubernetes cluster.

The talosconfig file is your local client configuration file, used to connect to and authenticate access to the cluster.

Controlplane and Worker

The two types of Machine Configs correspond to the two roles of Talos nodes, control plane nodes (which run both the Talos and Kubernetes control planes) and worker nodes (which run the workloads).

The main difference between Controlplane Machine Config files and Worker Machine Config files is that the former contains information about how to form the Kubernetes cluster.

Modifying the Machine configs

The generated Machine Configs have defaults that work for most cases. They use DHCP for interface configuration, and install to /dev/sda.

Sometimes, you will need to modify the generated files to work with your systems. A common case is needing to change the installation disk. If you try to to apply the machine config to a node, and get an error like the below, you need to specify a different installation disk:

$ talosctl apply-config --insecure -n 192.168.0.2 --file controlplane.yaml
error applying new configuration: rpc error: code = InvalidArgument desc = configuration validation failed: 1 error occurred:
    * specified install disk does not exist: "/dev/sda"

You can verify which disks your nodes have by using the talosctl disks --insecure command.

Insecure mode is needed at this point as the PKI infrastructure has not yet been set up.

For example, the talosctl disks command below shows that the system has a vda drive, not an sda:

$ talosctl -n 192.168.0.2 disks --insecure
DEV        MODEL   SERIAL   TYPE   UUID   WWID  MODALIAS                    NAME   SIZE    BUS_PATH
/dev/vda   -       -        HDD    -      -      virtio:d00000002v00001AF4   -      69 GB   /pci0000:00/0000:00:06.0/virtio2/

In this case, you would modify the controlplane.yaml and worker.yaml files and edit the line:

install:
  disk: /dev/sda # The disk used for installations.

to reflect vda instead of sda.

For information on customizing your machine configurations (such as to specify the version of Kubernetes), using machine configuration patches, or customizing configurations for individual machines (such as setting static IP addresses), see the Production Notes.

Understand talosctl, endpoints and nodes

It is important to understand the concept of endpoints and nodes. In short: endpoints are where talosctl sends commands to, but the command operates on the specified nodes. The endpoint will forward the command to the nodes, if needed.

Endpoints

Endpoints are the IP addresses of control plane nodes, to which the talosctl client directly talks.

Endpoints automatically proxy requests destined to another node in the cluster. This means that you only need access to the control plane nodes in order to manage the rest of the cluster.

You can pass in --endpoints <Control Plane IP Address> or -e <Control Plane IP Address> to the current talosctl command.

In this tutorial setup, the endpoint will always be the single control plane node.

Nodes

Nodes are the target(s) you wish to perform the operation on.

When specifying nodes, the IPs and/or hostnames are as seen by the endpoint servers, not as from the client. This is because all connections are proxied through the endpoints.

You may provide -n or --nodes to any talosctl command to supply the node or (comma-separated) nodes on which you wish to perform the operation.

For example, to see the containers running on node 192.168.0.200, by routing the containers command through the control plane endpoint 192.168.0.2:

talosctl -e 192.168.0.2 -n 192.168.0.200 containers

To see the etcd logs on both nodes 192.168.0.10 and 192.168.0.11:

talosctl -e 192.168.0.2 -n 192.168.0.10,192.168.0.11 logs etcd

For a more in-depth discussion of Endpoints and Nodes, please see talosctl.

Apply Configuration

To apply the Machine Configs, you need to know the machines’ IP addresses.

Talos prints the IP addresses of the machines on the console during the boot process:

[4.605369] [talos] task loadConfig (1/1): this machine is reachable at:
[4.607358] [talos] task loadConfig (1/1):   192.168.0.2

If you do not have console access, the IP address may also be discoverable from your DHCP server.

Once you have the IP address, you can then apply the correct configuration. Apply the controlplane.yaml file to the control plane node, and the worker.yaml file to all the worker node(s).

  talosctl apply-config --insecure \
    --nodes 192.168.0.2 \
    --file controlplane.yaml

The --insecure flag is necessary because the PKI infrastructure has not yet been made available to the node. Note: the connection will be encrypted, but not authenticated.

When using the --insecure flag, it is not necessary to specify an endpoint.

Default talosconfig configuration file

You reference which configuration file to use by the --talosconfig parameter:

talosctl --talosconfig=./talosconfig \
    --nodes 192.168.0.2 -e 192.168.0.2 version

Note that talosctl comes with tooling to help you integrate and merge this configuration into the default talosctl configuration file. See Production Notes for more information.

While getting started, a common mistake is referencing a configuration context for a different cluster, resulting in authentication or connection failures. Thus it is recommended to explicitly pass in the configuration file while becoming familiar with Talos Linux.

Kubernetes Bootstrap

Bootstrapping your Kubernetes cluster with Talos is as simple as calling talosctl bootstrap on your control plane node:

talosctl bootstrap --nodes 192.168.0.2 --endpoints 192.168.0.2 \
  --talosconfig=./talosconfig

The bootstrap operation should only be called ONCE on a SINGLE control plane node. (If you have multiple control plane nodes, it doesn’t matter which one you issue the bootstrap command against.)

At this point, Talos will form an etcd cluster, and start the Kubernetes control plane components.

After a few moments, you will be able to download your Kubernetes client configuration and get started:

  talosctl kubeconfig --nodes 192.168.0.2 --endpoints 192.168.0.2

Running this command will add (merge) you new cluster into your local Kubernetes configuration.

If you would prefer the configuration to not be merged into your default Kubernetes configuration file, pass in a filename:

  talosctl kubeconfig alternative-kubeconfig --nodes 192.168.0.2 --endpoints 192.168.0.2

You should now be able to connect to Kubernetes and see your nodes:

  kubectl get nodes

And use talosctl to explore your cluster:

talosctl --nodes 192.168.0.2 --endpoints 192.168.0.2 health \
   --talosconfig=./talosconfig
talosctl --nodes 192.168.0.2 --endpoints 192.168.0.2 dashboard \
   --talosconfig=./talosconfig

For a list of all the commands and operations that talosctl provides, see the CLI reference.

4 - Production Clusters

This document explains recommendations for running Talos Linux in production.

Acquire the installation image

Alternative Booting

For network booting and self-built media, you can use the published kernel and initramfs images:

• X86: vmlinuz-amd64 initramfs-amd64.xz
• ARM64: vmlinuz-arm64 initramfs-arm64.xz

Note that to use alternate booting, there are a number of required kernel parameters. Please see the kernel docs for more information.

Control plane nodes

For a production, highly available Kubernetes cluster, it is recommended to use three control plane nodes. Using five nodes can provide greater fault tolerance, but imposes more replication overhead and can result in worse performance.

Boot all three control plane nodes at this point. They will boot Talos Linux, and come up in maintenance mode, awaiting a configuration.

Decide the Kubernetes Endpoint

The Kubernetes API Server endpoint, in order to be highly available, should be configured in a way that uses all available control plane nodes. There are three common ways to do this: using a load-balancer, using Talos Linux’s built in VIP functionality, or using multiple DNS records.

Dedicated Load-balancer

If you are using a cloud provider or have your own load-balancer (such as HAProxy, Nginx reverse proxy, or an F5 load-balancer), a dedicated load balancer is a natural choice. Create an appropriate frontend for the endpoint, listening on TCP port 6443, and point the backends at the addresses of each of the Talos control plane nodes. Your Kubernetes endpoint will be the IP address or DNS name of the load balancer front end, with the port appended (e.g. https://myK8s.mydomain.io:6443).

Note: an HTTP load balancer can’t be used, as Kubernetes API server does TLS termination and mutual TLS authentication.

Layer 2 VIP Shared IP

Talos has integrated support for serving Kubernetes from a shared/virtual IP address. This requires Layer 2 connectivity between control plane nodes.

Choose an unused IP address on the same subnet as the control plane nodes for the VIP. For instance, if your control plane node IPs are:

• 192.168.0.10
• 192.168.0.11
• 192.168.0.12

you could choose the IP 192.168.0.15 as your VIP IP address. (Make sure that 192.168.0.15 is not used by any other machine and is excluded from DHCP ranges.)

Once chosen, form the full HTTPS URL from this IP:

https://192.168.0.15:6443

If you create a DNS record for this IP, note you will need to use the IP address itself, not the DNS name, to configure the shared IP (machine.network.interfaces[].vip.ip) in the Talos configuration.

After the machine configurations are generated, you will want to edit the controlplane.yaml file to activate the VIP:

machine:
    network:
     interfaces:
      - interface: enp2s0
        dhcp: true
        vip:
          ip: 192.168.0.15

For more information about using a shared IP, see the related Guide

DNS records

Add multiple A or AAAA records (one for each control plane node) to a DNS name.

For instance, you could add:

kube.cluster1.mydomain.com  IN  A  192.168.0.10
kube.cluster1.mydomain.com  IN  A  192.168.0.11
kube.cluster1.mydomain.com  IN  A  192.168.0.12

where the IP addresses are those of the control plane nodes.

Then, your endpoint would be:

https://kube.cluster1.mydomain.com:6443

Multihoming

If your machines are multihomed, i.e., they have more than one IPv4 and/or IPv6 addresss other than loopback, then additional configuration is required. A point to note is that the machines may become multihomed via privileged workloads.

Multihoming and etcd

The etcd cluster needs to establish a mesh of connections among the members. It is done using the so-called advertised address - each node learns the others’ addresses as they are advertised. It is crucial that these IP addresses are stable, i.e., that each node always advertises the same IP address. Moreover, it is beneficial to control them to establish the correct routes between the members and, e.g., avoid congested paths. In Talos, these addresses are controlled using the cluster.etcd.advertisedSubnets configuration key.

Multihoming and kubelets

Stable IP addressing for kubelets (i.e., nodeIP) is not strictly necessary but highly recommended as it ensures that, e.g., kube-proxy and CNI routing take the desired routes. Analogously to etcd, for kubelets this is controlled via machine.kubelet.nodeIP.validSubnets.

Example

Let’s assume that we have a cluster with two networks:

• public network
• private network 192.168.0.0/16

We want to use the private network for etcd and kubelet communication:

machine:
  kubelet:
    nodeIP:
      validSubnets:
        - 192.168.0.0/16
#...
cluster:
  etcd:
    advertisedSubnets: # listenSubnets defaults to advertisedSubnets if not set explicitly
      - 192.168.0.0/16

This way we ensure that the etcd cluster will use the private network for communication and the kubelets will use the private network for communication with the control plane.

Load balancing the Talos API

The talosctl tool provides built-in client-side load-balancing across control plane nodes, so usually you do not need to configure a load balancer for the Talos API.

However, if the control plane nodes are not directly reachable from the workstation where you run talosctl, then configure a load balancer to forward TCP port 50000 to the control plane nodes.

Note: Because the Talos Linux API uses gRPC and mutual TLS, it cannot be proxied by a HTTP/S proxy, but only by a TCP load balancer.

If you create a load balancer to forward the Talos API calls, the load balancer IP or hostname will be used as the endpoint for talosctl.

Add the load balancer IP or hostname to the .machine.certSANs field of the machine configuration file.

Do not use Talos Linux’s built in VIP function for accessing the Talos API. In the event of an error in etcd, the VIP will not function, and you will not be able to access the Talos API to recover.

Configure Talos

In many installation methods, a configuration can be passed in on boot.

For example, Talos can be booted with the talos.config kernel argument set to an HTTP(s) URL from which it should receive its configuration. Where a PXE server is available, this is much more efficient than manually configuring each node. If you do use this method, note that Talos requires a number of other kernel commandline parameters. See required kernel parameters.

Similarly, if creating EC2 kubernetes clusters, the configuration file can be passed in as --user-data to the aws ec2 run-instances command. See generally the Installation Guide for the platform being deployed.

Separating out secrets

When generating the configuration files for a Talos Linux cluster, it is recommended to start with generating a secrets bundle which should be saved in a secure location. This bundle can be used to generate machine or client configurations at any time:

talosctl gen secrets -o secrets.yaml

Now, we can generate the machine configuration for each node:

talosctl gen config --with-secrets secrets.yaml <cluster-name> <cluster-endpoint>

Here, cluster-name is an arbitrary name for the cluster, used in your local client configuration as a label. It should be unique in the configuration on your local workstation.

The cluster-endpoint is the Kubernetes Endpoint you selected from above. This is the Kubernetes API URL, and it should be a complete URL, with https:// and port. (The default port is 6443, but you may have configured your load balancer to forward a different port.) For example:

$ talosctl gen config --with-secrets secrets.yaml my-cluster https://192.168.64.15:6443
generating PKI and tokens
created controlplane.yaml
created worker.yaml
created talosconfig

Customizing Machine Configuration

The generated machine configuration provides sane defaults for most cases, but can be modified to fit specific needs.

Some machine configuration options are available as flags for the talosctl gen config command, for example setting a specific Kubernetes version:

talosctl gen config --with-secrets secrets.yaml --kubernetes-version 1.25.4 my-cluster https://192.168.64.15:6443

Other modifications are done with machine configuration patches. Machine configuration patches can be applied with talosctl gen config command:

talosctl gen config --with-secrets secrets.yaml --config-patch-control-plane @cni.patch my-cluster https://192.168.64.15:6443

Note: @cni.patch means that the patch is read from a file named cni.patch.

Machine Configs as Templates

Individual machines may need different settings: for instance, each may have a different static IP address.

When different files are needed for machines of the same type, there are two supported flows:

1. Use the talosctl gen config command to generate a template, and then patch the template for each machine with talosctl machineconfig patch.
2. Generate each machine configuration file separately with talosctl gen config while applying patches.

For example, given a machine configuration patch which sets the static machine hostname:

# worker1.patch
machine:
  network:
    hostname: worker1

Either of the following commands will generate a worker machine configuration file with the hostname set to worker1:

$ talosctl gen config --with-secrets secrets.yaml my-cluster https://192.168.64.15:6443
created /Users/taloswork/controlplane.yaml
created /Users/taloswork/worker.yaml
created /Users/taloswork/talosconfig
$ talosctl machineconfig patch worker.yaml --patch @worker1.patch --output worker1.yaml

talosctl gen config --with-secrets secrets.yaml --config-patch-worker @worker1.patch --output-types worker -o worker1.yaml my-cluster https://192.168.64.15:6443

Apply Configuration while validating the node identity

If you have console access you can extract the server certificate fingerprint and use it for an additional layer of validation:

  talosctl apply-config --insecure \
    --nodes 192.168.0.2 \
    --cert-fingerprint xA9a1t2dMxB0NJ0qH1pDzilWbA3+DK/DjVbFaJBYheE= \
    --file cp0.yaml

Using the fingerprint allows you to be sure you are sending the configuration to the correct machine, but is completely optional. After the configuration is applied to a node, it will reboot. Repeat this process for each of the nodes in your cluster.

Further details about talosctl, endpoints and nodes

Endpoints

When passed multiple endpoints, talosctl will automatically load balance requests to, and fail over between, all endpoints.

You can pass in --endpoints <IP Address1>,<IP Address2> as a comma separated list of IP/DNS addresses to the current talosctl command. You can also set the endpoints in your talosconfig, by calling talosctl config endpoint <IP Address1> <IP Address2>. Note: these are space separated, not comma separated.

As an example, if the IP addresses of our control plane nodes are:

• 192.168.0.2
• 192.168.0.3
• 192.168.0.4

We would set those in the talosconfig with:

  talosctl --talosconfig=./talosconfig \
    config endpoint 192.168.0.2 192.168.0.3 192.168.0.4

Nodes

The node is the target you wish to perform the API call on.

It is possible to set a default set of nodes in the talosconfig file, but our recommendation is to explicitly pass in the node or nodes to be operated on with each talosctl command. For a more in-depth discussion of Endpoints and Nodes, please see talosctl.

Default configuration file

You can reference which configuration file to use directly with the --talosconfig parameter:

  talosctl --talosconfig=./talosconfig \
    --nodes 192.168.0.2 version

However, talosctl comes with tooling to help you integrate and merge this configuration into the default talosctl configuration file. This is done with the merge option.

  talosctl config merge ./talosconfig

This will merge your new talosconfig into the default configuration file ($XDG_CONFIG_HOME/talos/config.yaml), creating it if necessary. Like Kubernetes, the talosconfig configuration files has multiple “contexts” which correspond to multiple clusters. The <cluster-name> you chose above will be used as the context name.

Kubernetes Bootstrap

Bootstrapping your Kubernetes cluster by simply calling the bootstrap command against any of your control plane nodes (or the loadbalancer, if used for the Talos API endpoint).:

  talosctl bootstrap --nodes 192.168.0.2

The bootstrap operation should only be called ONCE and only on a SINGLE control plane node!

At this point, Talos will form an etcd cluster, generate all of the core Kubernetes assets, and start the Kubernetes control plane components.

After a few moments, you will be able to download your Kubernetes client configuration and get started:

  talosctl kubeconfig

Running this command will add (merge) you new cluster into your local Kubernetes configuration.

If you would prefer the configuration to not be merged into your default Kubernetes configuration file, pass in a filename:

  talosctl kubeconfig alternative-kubeconfig

You should now be able to connect to Kubernetes and see your nodes:

  kubectl get nodes

And use talosctl to explore your cluster:

  talosctl -n <NODEIP> dashboard

For a list of all the commands and operations that talosctl provides, see the CLI reference.

5 - System Requirements

Minimum Requirements

Recommended

These requirements are similar to that of Kubernetes.

Storage

Talos Linux itself only requires less than 100 MB of disk space, but the EPHEMERAL partition is used to store pulled images, container work directories, and so on. Thus a minimum is 10 GiB of disk space is required. 100 GiB is desired. Note, however, that because Talos Linux assumes complete control of the disk it is installed on, so that it can control the partition table for image based upgrades, you cannot partition the rest of the disk for use by workloads.

Thus it is recommended to install Talos Linux on a small, dedicated disk - using a Terabyte sized SSD for the Talos install disk would be wasteful. Sidero Labs recommends having separate disks (apart from the Talos install disk) to be used for storage.

6 - What's New in Talos 1.5

See also upgrade notes for important changes.

Predictable Network Interface Names

Starting with version Talos 1.5, network interfaces are renamed to predictable names same way as systemd does that in other Linux distributions.

The naming schema enx78e7d1ea46da (based on MAC addresses) is enabled by default, the order of interface naming decisions is:

• firmware/BIOS provided index numbers for on-board devices (example: eno1)
• firmware/BIOS provided PCI Express hotplug slot index numbers (example: ens1)
• physical/geographical location of the connector of the hardware (example: enp2s0)
• interfaces’s MAC address (example: enx78e7d1ea46da)

The predictable network interface names features can be disabled by specifying net.ifnames=0 in the kernel command line. Talos automatically adds the net.ifnames=0 kernel argument when upgrading from Talos versions before 1.5, so upgrades to 1.5 don’t require any manual intervention.

This change doesn’t affect “cloud” platforms, like AWS, as Talos automatically adds net.ifnames=0 to the kernel command line.

SecureBoot

Talos now supports booting on UEFI systems in SecureBoot mode. When combined with TPM-based disk encryption, this provides Trusted Boot experience.

Boot Assets Generation

Talos provides a new unified way to generate various boot assets, including ISOs, disk images, PXE boot files, installer container images etc., which can be further customized with system extensions, extra kernel arguments.

Kubernetes

KubePrism - Kubernetes API Server In-Cluster Load Balancer

Talos now supports configuring the KubePrism - Kubernetes API Server in-cluster load balancer with machine config features.kubePrism.port and features.kubePrism.enabled fields.

If enabled, KubePrism binds to localhost and runs on the same port on every machine in the cluster. The default value for KubePrism endpoint is https://localhost:7445.

The KubePrism is used by the kubelet, kube-scheduler, kube-controller-manager and kube-proxy by default and can be passed to the CNIs like Cilium and Calico.

The KubePrism provides access to the Kubernetes API endpoint even if the external loadbalancer is not healthy, provided that the worker nodes can reach to the controlplane machine addresses directly.

XFS Quota

Talos 1.5+ enables XFS project quota support by default, also enabling by default kubelet feature gate LocalStorageCapacityIsolationFSQuotaMonitoring to use xfs quotas to monitor volume usage instead of du.

This feature is controlled by the .machine.features.diskQuotaSupport field in the machine config, it is set to true for new clusters.

When upgrading from a previous version, the feature can be enabled by setting the field to true. On the first mount of a volume, the quota information will be recalculated, which may take some time.

System Extensions

Installing System Extensions

The way to install system extensions on the machine using machine.install.extensions machine configuration option is now deprecated, please use instead the boot asset generation process to create an image with system extension pre-installed.

Extension Services

Talos now supports setting environmentFile for an extension service container spec. The extension waits for the file to be present before starting the service.

Disk Encryption

TPM-based Disk Encryption

Talos now supports encrypting STATE/EPHEMERAL with keys bound to a TPM device. The TPM device must be TPM2.0 compatible. This type of disk encryption should be used when booting Talos in SecureBoot mode.

Example machine config:

machine:
  systemDiskEncryption:
    ephemeral:
      provider: luks2
      keys:
        - slot: 0
          tpm: {}
    state:
      provider: luks2
      keys:
        - slot: 0
          tpm: {}

Network KMS Disk Encryption

Talos now supports new type of encryption keys which are sealed/unsealed with an external KMS server:

machine:
  systemDiskEncryption:
    ephemeral:
      provider: luks2
      keys:
        - kms:
            endpoint: https://1.2.3.4:443
          slot: 0

gRPC API definitions and a simple reference implementation of the KMS server can be found in this repository.

Container Images

talosctl image Command

A new set of commands was introduced to manage container images in the CRI:

• talosctl image list shows list of available images
• talosctl image pull allows to pre-pull an image into the CRI

Both new commands accept --namespace flag with two possible values:

• cri (default): images managed by the CRI (Kubernetes workloads)
• system: images managed by Talos (etcd and kubelet)

talosctl upgrade-k8s Image Pre-pulling

The command talosctl upgrade-k8s now by default pre-pulls images for Kubernetes controlplane components and kubelet. This provides an early check for missing images, and minimizes downtime during Kubernetes rolling component update.

Component Updates

• Linux: 6.1.45
• containerd: 1.6.23
• runc: 1.1.9
• etcd: 3.5.9
• Kubernetes: 1.28.0
• Flannel: 0.22.1

Talos is built with Go 1.20.7.

Talos now builds many device drivers as kernel modules in the x86 Linux kernel, which get automatically loaded on boot based on the hardware detected.

Deprecations

Machine Configuration Option .machine.install.bootloader

The .machine.install.bootloader option in the machine config is deprecated and will be removed in Talos 1.6. This was a no-op for a long time: the bootloader is always installed.

RDMA/RoCE support

Talos no longer loads by default rdma_rxe Linux driver, which is required for RoCE support. If the driver is required, it can be enabled by specifying rdma_rxe in the .machine.kernel.modules field in the machine config.

talosctl images Command

The command talosctl images was renamed to talosctl image default.

The backward-compatible alias is kept in Talos 1.5, but it will be dropped in Talos 1.6.

7 - Support Matrix

Platform Tiers

• Tier 1: Automated tests, high-priority fixes.
• Tier 2: Tested from time to time, medium-priority bugfixes.
• Tier 3: Not tested by core Talos team, community tested.

Tier 1

• Metal
• AWS
• GCP

Tier 2

• Azure
• Digital Ocean
• OpenStack
• VMWare

Tier 3

• Exoscale
• Hetzner
• nocloud
• Oracle Cloud
• Scaleway
• Vultr
• Upcloud