harvester/harvester
Open source hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) software observed · 2026-08-28
Health v2 · maintenance only
94/100
- Activity 99
- Release rhythm 84
- Longevity 100
How is this computed?
round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10) — computed 2026-09-02. Adoption (stars, forks) is never an input.
- gap_med: 45.0
- age_days: 2241
- days_rel: 26
- days_push: 7
- n_releases_24m: 17
Adoption not part of the score
5140 stars · 441 forks observed · 2026-08-28
What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded
Harvester is an open-source hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solution built on Kubernetes that runs on bare metal servers, providing integrated virtualization (via KubeVirt) and distributed block storage (via Longhorn). It offers VM lifecycle management, live migration, backup/restore, and networking, with integration into Rancher for unified container and VM workload management.
Use cases
- run virtual machines on bare metal servers with a cloud-native stack
- replace proprietary HCI solutions like VMware vSphere with an open-source alternative
- manage VMs and containers from a single Kubernetes-based platform
- set up edge infrastructure with lightweight hyperconverged clusters
- back up, snapshot, and restore VMs to NFS or S3 storage
- live-migrate VMs between hosts with zero downtime
- run Kubernetes clusters inside VMs on top of Harvester
When to choose
- you want a free, open-source HCI platform built on Linux, KVM, Kubernetes, KubeVirt, and Longhorn
- you need to unify legacy VM workloads with containerized workloads on bare metal
- you want to use the Kubernetes API to manage both VMs and containers
- you operate at the edge or datacenter and prefer direct-attached storage over SANs
- you already use Rancher and want integrated virtualization management
When to avoid
- you only need container orchestration without virtual machines - plain Kubernetes suffices
- you require advanced enterprise storage features like replication across geographically distant sites
- your hardware lacks virtualization support (KVM) or you run on public cloud VMs
- you need a mature desktop or client OS virtualization experience rather than datacenter infrastructure
Facets
application · maturity stable
container-orchestration self-hosted deployment developer-tools infrastructure-as-code cloud-computing self-hosted go hyperconverged-infrastructure hci virtualization kubevirt longhorn bare-metal rancher vm-management distributed-storage devops linux kubernetes
4 sources
- readme: https://github.com/harvester/harvester · fetched 2026-08-28 · 06d66f67d221
- homepage: https://harvesterhci.io/ · fetched 2026-08-29 · ea5035e3f823
- site_page: https://docs.harvesterhci.io/ · fetched 2026-08-29 · 2272455c8727
- site_page: https://docs.harvesterhci.io · fetched 2026-08-29 · 2272455c8727
Member repositories
| Repository | Role | Health v2 |
|---|---|---|
| harvester/harvester | main | 94 |
For agents
markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="harvester/harvester")
Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00 · Report a problem