Hi, I’m Mauro Morales! Born and raised in Guatemala, my tech journey has taken me across the globe—from the scenic Alps of Switzerland to the bustling streets of Berlin, and now to the charming cobblestone lanes of Ghent, Belgium. Since the mid-2000s, I’ve been coding, creating, and sharing my passion for technology. I work as an Open-Source Developer Specialist at Spectro Cloud, where I help shape Kairos, a groundbreaking operating system for edge computing. You’ll often find me at events like FOSDEM, KubeCon, and Open-Source Summit, geeking out about all things tech and connecting with fellow enthusiasts. I also serve as co-chair of the CNCF Special-Purpose Operating Systems Working Group, collaborating with brilliant minds to reimagine what’s possible in the OS space. When I’m not coding or presenting, you’ll most likely find me lacing up my running shoes and hitting the streets of Ghent.
In this workshop, you'll learn how to deploy Kubernetes clusters using the Hosted Control Plane (HCP) architecture combined with immutable worker nodes, a powerful approach that enhances scalability, reduces control plane resource usage, and strengthens your platform's security posture. We'll explore how to achieve this architecture using two CNCF projects: - Kamaji, to manage lightweight, multi-tenant hosted control planes. - Kairos, to build and manage secure, immutable nodes that are GitOps-ready by design. Through hands-on work, you'll learn how to generate Kairos artifacts using a web-based UI, configure them to automatically join tenant clusters managed by Kamaji, and lay the foundation for scalable, reproducible Kubernetes infrastructure — from core to edge.
In the age of containers and abstraction, we’re told the operating system no longer matters. That you can run anything on anything. But the reality is more nuanced — your organization might have deep expertise in a specific distro, licensing constraints, or compliance requirements that shape your stack from the kernel up. And the same applies to your Kubernetes flavor of choice. But setting up your Kubernetes infrastructure shouldn’t feel like you’re out at sea — catching the fish, cleaning it, and prepping every ingredient from scratch. Instead, it should feel like walking into your favorite poke spot: the freshest options already hand-picked for you, curated with care, and ready for you to assemble exactly the way you like it. That’s the experience Kairos Factory brings to infrastructure — letting you focus on what matters, while still getting a stack tailored to your exact taste. In this talk, we introduce Kairos Factory, a web-based builder that lets you assemble secure, immutable Kubernetes-ready OS images tailored to your needs. Think of it as Pok8s — your build-your-own Kubernetes Poke Bowl. Choose your base OS (Ubuntu, Alpine, etc.), pick your Kubernetes distribution (k3s, k0s), toss in your configuration toppings (VPNs, CRDs, mesh configs), and layer on your favorite sauces — TPM-backed boot, full-disk encryption, and other security features. Unlike opinionated open-source stacks that lock you into their tooling or upgrade paths, Kairos is truly composable — you can swap any layer without rebuilding your world. It’s designed for flexibility without compromise, giving you a declarative, production-grade OS image with full control from kernel to kubelet. Through live demos and real-world scenarios, we’ll explore how Kairos enables teams to take control of their infrastructure without abandoning existing know-how or processes. Whether you’re deploying to edge devices, bare metal, or cloud instances, you’ll walk away with a new model for curated infrastructure — not just composed systems. And maybe, just maybe, a craving for sushi.