Kotal Operator

Kotal operator is a cloud agnostic blockchain deployer that makes it super easy to deploy highly-available, self-managing, self-healing blockchain infrastructure (networks, nodes, storage clusters ...) on any cloud.

What can I do with Kotal Operator ?

Deploy ipfs peers and cluster peers

Deploy ipfs swarms

Deploy Ethereum transaction and mining nodes

Deploy Ethereum 2 beacon and validation nodes

Deploy private Ethereum networks

Deploy Filecoin nodes

Deploy Filecoin backed pinning services (FPS)

Kubernetes Custom Resources

Kotal extended kubernetes with custom resources in different API groups.

Group	Description	API Group	Status
Ethereum	Deploy ethereum nodes	ethereum.kotal.io/v1alpha1	alpha
IPFS	Deploy IPFS peers, cluster peers, and swarms	ipfs.kotal.io/v1alpha1	alpha
Filecoin	Deploy Filecoin nodes	filecoin.kotal.io/v1alpha1	alpha
Ethereum 2.0	Deploy validator and beacon chain nodes	ethereum2.kotal.io/v1alpha1	alpha
Algorand	Deploy relay and participation nodes	algorand.kotal.io/v1alpha1	coming soon 🚀

Client support

For each protocol, kotal supports at least 1 client (reference client), client can be changed by updating client: ... specification parameter.

Protocol	Client(s)
Ethereum	Hyperledger Besu, Go-Ethereum, Open Ethereum
Ethereum 2.0	Teku, Prysm, Lighthouse, Nimbus
Filecoin	Lotus
IFPS	go-ipfs, ipfs-cluster-service

Install Kotal

Kotal requires access to Kubernetes cluster with cert-manager installed.

For development purposes, we recommend KinD (Kubernetes in Docker) to create kubernetes clusters and tear down kubernetes clusters in seconds:

kind create cluster

After the cluster is up and running, install cert-manager:

kubectl apply -f https://github.com/jetstack/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.2.0/cert-manager.yaml

Install kotal custom resources and controllers:

kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kotalco/kotal/releases/download/v0.1-alpha.5/kotal.yaml

Example

Ethereum node using Hyperleger Besu client, joining rinkeby network, and enabling RPC HTTP server:

# ethereum-node.yaml

apiVersion: ethereum.kotal.io/v1alpha1

kind: Node

metadata:

  name: ethereum-node

spec:

  client: besu

  network: rinkeby

  rpc: true