Virtual Machines and Bare Metal
Run apps on bare metal, on hypervisors like VMware ESXi, or in the public cloud
Containers and Kubernetes
Use as a secure, stand-alone container host, or build cloud-scale Kubernetes nodes and clusters
Local and Remote Development
Use Photon OS as a Development Environment for building modern applications
Download Photon OS
Download local images for x86, ARM64 and Raspberry Pi, or use Cloud images for environments like AWS, GCE, Azure, along with checksums and previous releases.
ISO Images
Contains everything needed to install. Choose between a minimal or a full installation to suit your deployment needs. Photon can be installed from ISO directly, or can be used with PXE/kickstart environments for automated installations
OVA Appliance
Portable, ready-to-go virtual environment. Photon OS Open Virtual Appliance packages include a highly sanitized and optimized kernel and packages to streamline and standardize appliance deployments.
Features
Lightweight Container Host
Photon OS delivers just enough of a Linux operating system to efficiently run containers on VMware vSphere, Microsoft Azure, Google Compute Engine, and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
Read The DocsSecure By Default
Using the recommendations of the Kernel Self-Protection Project (KSPP), the Photon OS Linux Kernel is secure from the start. Packages are built with hardened security flags and can be easily updated and verified.
Read The Docs
Real Time Kernel Support
Photon OS provides a performant stack for deployments like Virtual Radio Access Network applications that demand real time capabilities and ultra-low latency response
Read The DocsContributing
The Photon project team welcomes contributions from the community. If you would like to contribute code and you have not signed our Contributor License Agreement (CLA), our CLA-bot will walk you through the process and update the issue when you open a Pull Request.
Team Photon
Photon OS is released as open source software by an epic team of contributors.
Sharath George
Contributor
Anish Swaminathan
Contributor
Vasavi Sirnapalli
Contributor
Alexey Makhalov
Contributor
Srivatsa Bhat
Contributor
Oliver Kurth
Contributor
Siju Maliakkal
Contributor
Susant Sahani
Contributor
Michelle Wang
Contributor
Tapas Kundu
Contributor
Harinadh Dommaraju
Contributor
Ajay Kaher
Contributor
Michael Roy
Website + Docs
Carlos Murillo
Website Graphics
Kishan Malur
Product Manager
License
The ISO and OVA images are distributed under the VMware Photon OS EULA. Open source license information may be found the in Photon OS Open Source License file.
Support
Photon OS is released as open source software and provides community support through our GitHub project page. If you encounter an issue or have a question, feel free to reach out on the GitHub issues page for Photon OS.
Get Started
See the documentation to get started with Photon OS