Karios BSD is free to download, use, modify, and deploy on standalone systems without licensing fees or feature restrictions.
Karios BSD Installation ISO
Complete installer containing the base FreeBSD kernel, Bhyve hypervisor, and local management engines.
Source Code Repositories
Access our public Git infrastructure. Review the commits, audit the security, and compile from source.
Installation & Deployment Guides
Read our technical guidelines for quick setup on individual hosts.
For organizations requiring enterprise capabilities, commercial support, advanced management, migration services, and additional infrastructure solutions, we offer two tracks.
Support Models & Solutions
Track A: Paid Support Available for Karios BSD (Standalone Nodes)
For organizations that run their standalone infrastructure on the open-source Karios BSD platform, we provide paid technical support and professional engineering services on a direct engagement basis. You maintain the ultimate flexibility of a pure, BSD-licensed environment while gaining the peace of mind that comes with trusted corporate backing.
Engineering Access
Direct access to Karios core developers for troubleshooting and diagnostic support.
Architectural Reviews
Hardware validation, performance optimization, and custom deployment planning.
Custom Engineering
Direct collaboration to backport drivers or integrate custom APIs into your standalone environment.
Please contact us for KariosBSD commercial support.
Note on Community Support: Community resources (forums, chat, wiki) are strictly run by volunteers on a peer-to-peer basis. Karios engineers do not provide free support, monitoring, or official assistance on community channels.
Track B: Karios Core (Enterprise Fleet Orchestration & Massive Scale)
For global corporations, government bodies, and hyperscale edge deployments requiring unified bare-metal provisioning, comprehensive automated compliance, and distributed high availability across multiple sites and regions, we offer Karios Core as a separate, commercial operating system platform.
Karios Core acts as a centralized fleet manager, introducing an entirely different OS model optimized for automated multi-site orchestration, software-defined networking (SDN/VPC), and deep systems integration.
It scales easily from small 3-node hyperconverged clusters up to massive fleets of thousands of nodes, designed to handle the secure, high-density workloads that newer AI infrastructures demand at scale. Karios Core is backed by comprehensive 24×7 enterprise-grade support.
| Architectural Capability | Karios BSD (Self/Peer Supported) | Karios BSD (Paid Support Available) | Karios Core (Enterprise HCI Platform) |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Primary Target |
Enthusiasts, Devs & Home Labs |
Production Standalone Nodes |
Multi-Site Enterprise & AI/ML Fleets |
|
Multi-Site Enterprise & AI/ML Fleets |
100% Open Source (BSD-license) |
100% Open Source (BSD-license) |
Commercial License Layer |
|
Scale Focus |
Standalone Single-Host |
Standalone Single-Host |
Clusters: 3 to 1,000s of Nodes (Global Scale) |
|
SLA Guarantees |
None |
None (Best-Effort Engineering) |
Included (Guaranteed 24×7 SLAs) |
|
Deployment Security |
Standard Isolation |
Standard Isolation |
Multi-Tenancy Air-Gapped Deployment |
|
Workload Migration |
Manual / Scripted |
Professional Migration Assistance |
Built-in VMware Migration Suite |
|
High Availability |
Node-level Resilience |
Node-level Support & Custom Scripting |
Automated Multi-Host Failover, Cluster HA |
|
Networking Architecture |
Host Firewalls & Core Routing |
Optimized Networking Customization |
Centralized SDN, VPC & Integrated SD-WAN |
|
Hardware Orchestration |
Standard PCIe Passthrough |
Custom Driver Integration |
Enhanced GPU Support (vGPU & AI/ML Pools) |
|
Storage Engine |
Native ZFS Storage |
Native ZFS Storage |
Scalable Ceph Storage (Scale-out Block/Object) |
|
Technical Support |
Peer-to-Peer Only (No Karios Support) |
Direct Engineer Access (Paid Support) |
24x7x365 Dedicated SLA-Backed Support |
|
Technical Support |
Peer-to-Peer Only (No Karios Support) |
Direct Engineer Access (Paid Support) |
24x7x365 Dedicated SLA-Backed Support |
|
DCIM & IPAM |
Manual integration |
Manual integration |
Automated Provisioning, IPAM & DCIM Integrations |
|
SIEM & Security |
OpenSSH, PF, Auditd |
Security hardening assistance |
Centralized SIEM, Auditing, & SCAP Security Tools |
|
Fleet Management |
Ansible/Terraform/Manual |
Ansible/Terraform/Manual |
Zero-Touch Bare-Metal Fleet Management |
|
Power Infrastructure |
Host-level Monitoring |
Best-Effort Custom Scripts |
Advanced Fleet Power & Thermal Monitoring |