Kaleido Certified Besu Images
Kaleido is the premier provider of enterprise support contracts for Besu.
Besu is a complete ethereum implementation that is open source and maintained within Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust: https://www.lfdecentralizedtrust.org/projects/besu
Supported Versions
Kaleido maintains releases on an enterprise fork of the Besu codebase. These releases are built upon select open source releases, and are provided on a cadence suitable for enterprise customers requiring access to new features, and longevity of support.
Kaleido is a core contributor to the Besu project with maintainers who are involved during the open source community release process. In addition, Kaleido performs lifecycle, compatibility and migration testing of enterprise features (such as the QBFT consensus algorithm) as part of each Kaleido release.
Software support is only available on these Kaleido Besu releases.
The list of Kaleido Besu releases is available here
Scope of Support
During the support period:
- Kaleido will provide remediation for CVE’s reported to us via the Software Support Process within 30 working days.
- Kaleido will provide fixes for defects reported to us via the Software Support Process
- Kaleido will respond to usage based questions on a best-effort basis
When delivering a remediation for a defect or CVE:
- Kaleido will “cherry-pick” a fix from an upstream community version if available
- Kaleido will develop a remediation in the case that no existing fix is available
- Kaleido will contribute back fixes developed to the open source Besu project
- Kaleido will include developed fixes in future Kaleido-Besu versions until such a time as a fix is available in an open source Besu and this open source Besu version is available in a Kaledio-Besu version.
When reporting a problem to Kaleido Software Support:
- The Kaleido support team will guide the reporter through which logs and documentation to collect to allow Kaleido to perform problem determination.
- The Kaleido team may make recommendations to changes in configuration of the Besu environments or topology.
- The Kaleido team will not work directly on the running Besu system
Standard support period
Kaleido provides a standard period of support of 12 months from release.
For example if Kaleido Besu v24.2.0 was released in March 2024 they have support for that version until March 2025. The list of Kaleido Besu releases includes the end of standard support for every release.
Extended support
Extended support beyond the standard support period must be agreed on a per-release basis, in advance of raising a support ticket.
Kaleido platform releases
The primary distribution vehicle for Kaleido releases of Besu is via the Kaleido platform.
The Kaleido platform provides a cloud native administration experience, API, and scalable kubernetes based HA/DR design for management of production Besu nodes and networks.
Besu versions are packaged and distributed as a service within the Kaleido platform, and the version information for the available Besu versions in each Kaleido release is provided here:
https://help.kaleido.io/hc/en-us/articles/25542351157517-Kaleido-Platform-Releases
Pre-built, CVE-scanned Docker images
Users with Kaleido support entitlements for self-hosted Besu nodes outside of the Kaleido platform are strongly encouraged to use our certified Docker images.
Docker images contain a Kaleido certified combination of JVM, Besu and other components tested together as a whole.
Images are certified as being CVE free at the point of release.
Docker images are supported in any compatible container runtime including docker, podman, CRI-O and containerd.
Pre-built, CVE-scanned archive of Besu Jar files
Users who wish to create their own Docker image, or non-Docker Besu runtime environment, are able to use Kaleido’s pre-built version of Besu.
This approach is suitable for users who have specific requirements for their Docker images, but want Kaleido to provide a stable and secure build of Besu to use.
The pre-built version of Besu is currently available as an amd64 build for Linux x86_64. Once downloaded it can be unzipped into a build system or copied into a Docker image.
Pre-built versions of Besu can be found under the kaleido-node-besu-linux-amd64 artifact in Kaleido’s JFrog repository.
When using a binary distribution in this form, you are responsible for managing the JVM runtime environment, and other operating system dependencies.
You must use a version of Java™ supported by that version of Besu.
You must use a Linux Distribution that is supported by the JVM runtime environment that you are using. Kaleido recommends using a distribution that is fully source and binary compatible with an in-support version of Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Enterprise Linux, Alpine Linux or Oracle Linux.
If you choose a different JVM to the one supplied with the Kaleido docker distribution, Kaleido may ask you to reproduce your issue with the standard JVM as part of investigations into any issue.
Pre-built archives are certified as being CVE free at the point of release.
Downloading distributions
All of the above distributions are available via the Kaleido image repository: https://kaleidoio.jfrog.io/
As part of your entitlement you will receive login credentials to this repository, and access to the distributions of the Kaleido platform, or binary images appropriate to your entitlement.
Additional instructions for subscribing to notifications of new Kaleido releases are available here.
Building from source
Users who are unable to use any of our binary distributions, are able to build the Kaleido distributions themselves from source.
This approach allows users to use their own build pipeline to create Besu binaries and deploy them into their own environment.
Besu must be built from a commit of one of the releases listed in the Kaleido Besu fork and must use a version of Java™ supported by that version of Besu.
The build must be performed via our standard documented build process, and this ensures the exact commit from Github is available in the logs of the container at runtime.
If logs supplied on a ticket do not show the commit of an actively supported Kaleido version of Besu, you will be asked to reproduce your issue with a supported version before any further investigation of your issue.
The Dockerfile available in the open source repository is not supported for building a Docker image as certain versions of Besu use a base OS image that is not updated with the latest CVE fixes.