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Plethos

Self-Service, virtual Kubernetes Clusters for Your Organization

Plethos is a multi-tenant Kubernetes platform on which everyone in your organization can create their own isolated cluster in one click. Built on vCluster by vCluster Labs.
Deploy PlethosHow Plethos works

Self-service clusters

Enter a name and get a virtual cluster with a downloadable kubeconfig. No ticket or admin approval needed.

Isolated tenants

Each vCluster has its own Kubernetes API server. Users are cluster-admin inside theirs and have no access to anyone else’s.

One host cluster

You only operate a single host cluster. Unused vClusters can be put to sleep and are deleted automatically after an email warning.

Sleep, wake and share

Pause a vCluster, wake it later or invite other users to work on it as well.

Publicly exposed apps

Expose an HTTP app from any vCluster under its own subdomain.

OIDC login

Users can sign in with your organization’s existing OIDC identity provider.






A user’s perspective of Plethos

Section titled “A user’s perspective of Plethos”
  • Cluster creation by simply choosing a name and clicking + create cluster
  • A table of all the clusters they own and another for clusters shared with them
  • Kubeconfig download for connecting via kubectl
  • More actions like sleeping/waking, deleting, sharing and data export

    Click the image to see it in full resolution.

Plethos cluster table with status and actions



Fully Open Source, maintained by HM Cloudlabs

Section titled “Fully Open Source, maintained by HM Cloudlabs”

Plethos grew out of a thesis at the Munich University of Applied Sciences , which reimplemented a tool previously used there internally. It was built specifically to be open-source so other organizations can benefit from it as well.

Interested in how Plethos works or want to contribute to it?

Visit on Codeberg


Who Plethos is for

Section titled “Who Plethos is for”

Plethos is mainly for small to medium-sized organizations that want to give people their own Kubernetes cluster without running a physical cluster for each of them. Typical cases:

  • Development and CI: short-lived clusters for experiments, testing and CI runners.
  • Internal tooling: internal web-based tools and CRON jobs.
  • Universities and education: disposable clusters for assignments and courses, long-lived ones for university tools or research projects. Running in production at the Munich University of Applied Sciences.
Benefits of using vClusters
Section titled “Benefits of using vClusters”
Namespaces vClusters (Plethos) Separate clusters
Own API server and CRDs No Yes Yes
Cluster-admin for the tenant No Yes Yes
Own nodes and kernel No No Yes
Isolation Lowest High Highest
Cost and effort Lowest Low Highest



Deploying Plethos

Section titled “Deploying Plethos”

Plethos can be deployed with the official Helm chart. The basic steps are:

Terminal
# Write your custom configution into the `values.yaml` file, starting from the chart's defaults
helm show values oci://codeberg.org/hmcloudlabs/plethos --version <version> > values.yaml


# Create the necessary secrets the portal neeeds
kubectl create secret generic plethos-portal-secrets -n plethos \
  --from-literal=PORTAL_SESSION_SECRET="$(openssl rand -hex 32)" \
  --from-literal=CSRF_TOKEN_SECRET="$(openssl rand -hex 32)" \
  --from-literal=OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET="<your OIDC client secret>" \
  --from-literal=SMTP_USERNAME="<your SMTP username>" \
  --from-literal=SMTP_PASSWORD="<your SMTP password>"


# Install the Plethos Helm Chart
helm install plethos oci://codeberg.org/hmcloudlabs/plethos --version <version> \
  --namespace plethos \
  -f values.yaml

See Deploying Plethos for the full documentation.




Community

Section titled “Community”
Report a bug or request a featureOpen an issue on our Codeberg issue page.
ContributeRead the contributing guide and open a pull request.
Fix a mistake on this websiteMake a contribution to the official Plethos website.
Plethos InternalsHow the portal, controller and VClusterClaim CRD work.