The tech landscape is ever-evolving, and cloud computing and operating systems are no exception. While some organizations follow trends, others set them—if you’re reading this blog, chances are you belong to the latter.
Since Kubernetes beta release, we at Sidero have been active consumers and users. Driven by the need for a more secure and efficient Kubernetes experience, we introduced our first product in 2019: Talos Linux, an open source solution that simplifies and enhances the security of Kubernetes management for developers, operators, and SREs. Building on the foundation of Talos, we launched Omni, a platform tailored for enterprise and edge environments.
In this blog, we explore five key trends shaping compute environments and share insights to guide your IT strategy. The trends covered:
- Security
- Cost Savings
- Simplicity
- Sustainable cloud computing
- Edge Computing
Security: The Rise of the Specialized Operating System
Security and protecting compute infrastructures is a constant concern. As cyber threats grow in frequency, sophistication, and level of destruction, organizations will be looking to implement infrastructures that better protect their cloud environments.
One option for strengthening security is using an operating system with enhanced security features built in and designed for a single use case. This will protect your environment more than a general purpose operating system.
What to look for in a Secure OS:
- Reduced attack surface: Operating systems with fewer running processes and daemons minimize entry points for attackers.
- Kernel Self Protection Project (KSPP): Ensure your Linux distribution follows KSPP guidelines for proactive kernel security.
- CIS Benchmark: Systems designed with globally recognized best practices as outlined by Center for Internet Security (CIS) benchmarks provide enhanced protection against common and emerging risks including disabling unused ports, removing unnecessary app permissions, and limiting administrative privileges.
- Immutable Operating System: Immutable OSs are superior for their security features. Once deployed, they cannot be modified, maintaining a consistent, unalterable state post deployment, enhancing consistency and security.
- Automated Network Level Encryption: Technologies like WireGuard simplify secure cluster operations through the utilization of state-of-the-art cryptography that is fast, simple, and lean. Some operating systems, such as Talos Linux, use automation tools like KubeSpan to automate the process of creating and maintaining a WireGuard network for clusters to create hybrid Kubernetes clusters that span the cloud, data center, and edge.
- API-Driven Management: Eliminating traditional management interfaces (e.g., Bash and SSH) in favor of APIs reduces human error and enforces consistency.
- Mutual TLS encrypted API: Trusted certificate based verification adds a heightened level of safeguards against unauthorized access, ensuring that sensitive data is transmitted over secure channels, and only to trusted parties. This is particularly valuable for edge environments and highly secure industries such as government, health care, and financial services.
Cost Savings: The Big Cloud Exit
Overall IT spending is expected to increase while IT budgets are tightening and infrastructure demands are increasing. Cost savings will take center stage in 2025 due to geopolitical uncertainty and increased investment in other IT areas, such as security and AI. One cost saving measure expected to increase in 2025 is the shift from the cloud to on-prem or hybrid cloud solutions.
Considerations for Cost Efficient Infrastructure:
- Operating System Choice: Select an operating system designed to fit your workload needs. For example, if you are running Kubernetes on bare metal servers, choosing an OS designed for this specific use will streamline your operations and reduce costs.
- Portability: An OS that is portable across infrastructures enables smooth transitions of applications and data between cloud and on-prem environments without significant rework. This provides flexibility to choose the best services based on needs, avoid vendor lock-in, optimize costs, and ensure business continuity.
- Flexibility: A flexible approach enables organizations to choose the infrastructure for their varying compute needs. Perhaps you have a data-intensive application that needs low latency for real-time applications, like online gaming and financial trading. Some organizations need a specific server configuration they cannot get in a cloud environment. Having a flexible approach will enable your organization to rapidly adapt to new opportunities and challenges.
Simplicity: Code-Defined Everything
There is so much we are trying to get done in a day and teams are increasingly overburdened. Organizations are actively seeking to streamline processes to improve efficiency, enhance employee satisfaction, and improve customer experiences.
Adopting the Kubernetes paradigm of declaratively defining the state of different components is one way, so we expect to see a rise in declarative configuration not just of Kubernetes, but everywhere – declarative OSs, networking, etc. Simplifying compute environments offers the added benefit of increased security.
Key Features of Simplified Compute Environments:
- Built-in Intelligence: Operating systems with built-in intelligence and embedding operational knowledge for specific tasks (such as running Kubernetes) can accelerate setup time and reduce the need for specialized expertise.
- Purpose built: An OS purpose-built for your workloads, such as Kubernetes, offers faster container startup, reduced resource consumption, and a streamlined security model focused on container isolation. This specialization improves performance, security, reliability, and efficiency.
- Minimal Design: Lightweight OSs remove unnecessary components, providing only essential functionality. The benefits can be numerous including fewer security vulnerabilities, faster startup times, and lower resource consumption.
- Declarative Configurations: Systems focusing on the “what” (desired state) rather than the “how” simplify maintenance, reduce complexity, and facilitate the parallelization of tasks.
Sustainable Cloud Computing
As more organizations become aware of (and care about) the high environmental cost of compute infrastructures, specifically for AI, architectures that consume less energy and carbon emissions will be of interest. An energy-efficient computing approach improves sustainability through more efficient architecture, code and algorithms, hardware optimized for efficiency, and the use of renewable energy to run systems.
Why It Matters:
- Resource Efficiency: Generally, purpose-built software has fewer executed instructions and consumes fewer resources, enabling you to do more with less.
- Renewable Energy Integration: Systems designed for low energy consumption align with sustainability goals while reducing operational costs.
Edge Computing
Businesses will continue to move computation and storage closer to the devices that generate data and use it, aiming to reduce latency and bandwidth usage. The line between edge and cloud computing is lessening, creating a more seamless computational experience. And in keeping with the simplicity theme above – enterprises are deploying Kubernetes at the edge, even in single node clusters in many cases, to gain the advantage of consistency and simplicity. Sidero saw a significant shift to edge computing in 2024 with organizations such as Roche and PowerFlex bringing their compute closer to the source.
The Edge Advantage:
- Secure Remote Operations: Features like TrustedBoot ensure security at remote sites. Immutable OSs add to the security at a remote location.
- Minimal Footprint: Lightweight OSs with efficient caching and networking are perfect for edge environments.
- Ease of Maintenance: Simple, automated upgrades reduce the need for on-site expertise.
In Summary
The positive for technology environments is the amount of choice. The downside is … the amount of choice. There will be no one solution that solves all the challenges. The key is to prioritize what matters most and align with providers who share your vision for growth.
Sidero Labs delivers solutions like Omni and Talos Linux to bring the simplicity of the cloud to bare-metal and edge Kubernetes environments. With scalable API driven management for Kubernetes clusters in any environment, Talos and Omni are making on-prem infrastructures secure by default, easier to use, and more reliable to operate.
Talos Linux, the only Linux distribution purpose-built for Kubernetes and the power behind Omni, draws on decades of systems and operational experience to create a full-stack production environment focused on security, cost savings, simplicity, and sustainability.
Kubernetes is designed to be scalable, API-driven infrastructure for anyone, from cloud, on-prem, and to the edge. Using Talos Linux and Omni, complex and fragile script automation is replaced with state driven, declarative configurations, meeting infrastructure needs in any environment so you can focus on your applications instead of managing the operating system or Kubernetes.
Explore how Sidero can help you simplify, secure, and optimize your infrastructure with solutions like Omni and Talos Linux.