Operating System Architecture

This section details the architecture and management of our operating system configurations, powered by NixOS and Hephaestus.

System Overview

RPCU leverages Hephaestus, a proprietary NixOS forge, to deliver declarative and reproducible operating system configurations. These configurations are specifically engineered for optimization within OpenStack infrastructure environments.

The Hephaestus Platform

Hephaestus serves as the foundational management system, providing:

• Declarative Infrastructure: Complete operating system definitions expressed as code.
• Deterministic Builds: Guarantees identical output results across different build environments.
• Atomic Lifecycle Management: Facilitates safe system upgrades and immediate rollbacks.
• Optimized Artifacts: Generates specialized VM images tailored for OpenStack and RPCU deployments.

Boot Requirements

Hephaestus is designed exclusively for systems utilizing UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) BOOT. Legacy BIOS boot is not supported, with the sole exception of the sunraku profile, which is specifically configured for legacy BIOS environments. Ensure your target hardware is configured for the appropriate boot mode prior to deployment.

Standard Infrastructure Profiles

Hephaestus defines several specialized profiles acting as the pillars of our infrastructure:

• lucy, makise, quinn: These three profiles form the Baremetal Kubernetes Cluster. They are dedicated exclusively to hosting the OpenStack Control Plane.
• sunraku: A specialized profile dedicated to hosting the Netbird VPN Server, securing network access to the infrastructure.
• generic: The default fallback profile applied during fresh installations, intended as a blank canvas for further customization.

Core Advantages of NixOS

Immutable Configuration

All system aspects, from package management to service orchestration, are defined via Nix configuration files. This ensures infrastructure immutability and facilitates strict version control.

Environmental Consistency

NixOS eliminates environment-specific discrepancies ("works on my machine") by ensuring that a configuration built in one environment yields the exact same result in another.

Reliability & Recovery

The system preserves every generation of the configuration. In the event of an issue, administrators can instantly roll back to a previous, stable state.

Dependency Integrity

Nix's functional package management model ensures rigorous dependency resolution, preventing conflicts and maintaining system integrity.