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Overview

CasOS is a cloud operating system built on Kubernetes. It embeds the full Kubernetes control plane — API server, controller manager, and scheduler — inside a single Go binary, so you do not need an existing cluster, a separate etcd installation, or any Kubernetes bootstrap tooling. Run one binary, point it at a MySQL database, and you have a fully functional cloud OS with a built-in web UI.

The live demo is available at https://casos.casnode.com.

What problem it solves​

Setting up a Kubernetes cluster typically involves installing etcd, bootstrapping the API server, joining nodes with kubeadm, and managing TLS certificates across multiple processes. CasOS collapses all of this into a single process. MySQL replaces etcd (via kine), TLS certificates are generated automatically on first start, and the control plane components start in the same process as the web UI. The result is a Kubernetes environment you can stand up in minutes, not hours.

What you can do with it​

From the web UI you can manage the full lifecycle of Kubernetes workloads: create Deployments, StatefulSets, and CronJobs; scale them up and down; roll out new images; attach persistent storage; expose them through Services and Ingress rules. You can also manage the supporting infrastructure — Namespaces, ConfigMaps, Secrets, ServiceAccounts, NetworkPolicies, and ResourceQuotas — all without kubectl.

For security, CasOS adds two layers on top of standard Kubernetes RBAC: a Casbin admission webhook that can block specific resource operations, and a Casbin authorization webhook that can restrict who can read or write any resource. Trivy image scanning is built in so you can check container images for known CVEs before deploying.

All authentication is handled by Casdoor, which means you can connect any identity provider Casdoor supports — Google, GitHub, LDAP, SAML, and more — without any changes to CasOS.

Architecture at a glance​

CasOS is written in Go. The backend uses the Beego framework. The frontend is React 18 with Ant Design. Kubernetes state lives in MySQL alongside application data, using kine as the etcd shim. See the Architecture page for a deeper look at how the components fit together.