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Butler Roadmap

This document outlines planned development for Butler. Plans are subject to change based on community feedback and priorities.

Current Status​

Version: 0.9.x (Beta)

Butler is in beta with a comprehensive feature set:

  • Management cluster bootstrap across 5 providers (Harvester, Nutanix, AWS, GCP, Azure) with Proxmox planned
  • Tenant cluster provisioning with hosted control planes via Steward
  • Multi-OS worker nodes (Talos, Rocky, Flatcar, Bottlerocket, Kairos)
  • Three control plane exposure modes (LoadBalancer, Ingress, Gateway)
  • Enterprise IPAM with NetworkPool and IPAllocation
  • Addon management (Cilium, MetalLB, Longhorn, cert-manager, Traefik, FluxCD)
  • CLI tools (butleradm, butlerctl) with cloud bootstrap support
  • Web Console with terminal access, addon management, and ImageSync UI
  • Team-based multi-tenancy with resource quotas
  • SSO integration (Google, Microsoft Entra ID, Okta)
  • Butler Image Factory for OS image building and syncing
  • Configurable control plane resource limits for etcd resource management

2026 Q2​

Butler Image Factory​

  • Phase 2: Full image lifecycle - Automated image builds for all OS types
  • Provider-native image registration - Auto-register images on Nutanix, Proxmox
  • Image garbage collection - Clean up unused images on providers

Provider Expansion​

  • Proxmox VE provider - butler-provider-proxmox
  • VMware vSphere provider - butler-provider-vsphere

Platform Stability​

  • Comprehensive E2E testing - Automated integration tests across all providers
  • Performance benchmarks - Published scaling limits (target: 100+ tenants per management cluster)

Console Improvements​

  • Butler Portal (Backstage) - Workspace federation across clusters
  • Provider management UI - CRUD for ProviderConfigs

2026 H2​

Enterprise Features​

  • Cost tracking - Resource usage per team
  • Compliance policies - Enforce security standards (pod security, network policies)
  • API tokens - Service account authentication for CI/CD
  • Audit logging - Track all cluster operations

Cluster Operations​

  • Cluster auto-scaling - Scale workers based on workload pressure
  • Cluster templates - Reusable cluster configurations beyond ButlerConfig defaults
  • In-place Kubernetes upgrades - Upgrade tenant cluster K8s version without rebuild

Platform Maturity​

  • v1.0 release - Stable API graduation from v1alpha1 to v1
  • High availability documentation - Disaster recovery and backup guides
  • Steward CNCF Sandbox submission - Target 2027

Future Vision​

Butler Portal (Internal Developer Platform)​

Backstage-based IDP that integrates with Butler:

  • Workspace federation across multiple Butler management clusters
  • Service catalog with Butler cluster creation
  • Developer self-service portal
  • Template-driven application onboarding

Ecosystem Expansion​

  • Crossplane integration - Managed cloud resources alongside tenant clusters
  • Terraform provider - IaC integration for Butler resources
  • Pulumi provider - Modern IaC option

Completed Milestones​

2024 Q4​

  • Initial butler-api with core CRDs
  • butler-bootstrap controller
  • butler-controller for TenantCluster
  • Harvester provider implementation
  • Nutanix provider implementation
  • butler-cli with butleradm and butlerctl
  • Helm chart packaging and OCI registry publishing

2025 Q1-Q2​

  • Butler Console (React + TypeScript)
  • butler-server API backend
  • Google SSO integration
  • Team-based multi-tenancy with resource quotas
  • ManagementAddon controller
  • Single-node topology support
  • Microsoft Entra ID and Okta SSO

2025 H2​

  • Steward (community-governed Kamaji fork) stabilization
  • CAPI-Steward control plane provider
  • Talos worker support with talosconfig generation
  • Control plane exposure modes (Ingress, Gateway)
  • Enterprise IPAM with NetworkPool/IPAllocation
  • Configurable control plane resource limits

2026 Q1​

  • Cloud bootstrap (AWS, GCP, Azure) with butleradm
  • Cloud provider controllers (butler-provider-aws/gcp/azure)
  • Multi-OS worker provisioning (Talos, Rocky, Flatcar, Bottlerocket, Kairos)
  • Butler Image Factory (Phase 1)
  • ImageSync CRD and butlerctl image commands
  • LoadBalancerRequest CRD for cloud HA control planes
  • Butler Console ImageSync UI
  • Butler Portal v0.1.0 (Backstage workspaces plugin)

Contributing to the Roadmap​

We welcome community input on priorities:

  1. Feature Requests: Open a GitHub Issue
  2. Discussions: Join GitHub Discussions
  3. Design Proposals: Submit a design proposal

See Also​