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title: Operating System Management with Elemental
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Elemental enables cloud-native host management. Elemental allows you to onboard any machine in any location, whether its in a datacenter or on the edge, and integrate them seamlessly into Kubernetes while managing your workflows (e.g., OS updates). 

## Elemental with Rancher 

Elemental in Rancher:

- Is Kubernetes native, which allows you to manage the OS via Elemental in Kubernetes clusters. 
- Is nondisruptive from a Kubernetes operational perspective.
- Is declarative and GitOps friendly. 
- Allows OCI Image-based flows, which are trusted, deterministic, and predictable. 
- Works at scale. It enables fleet-sized OS management.

### When should I use Elemental? 

- Elemental enables cloud-native OS management from Rancher manager. It works with any OS (e.g., SLE Micro vanilla). 
- Elemental allows cloud-native management for machines in datacenters and on the edge.
- Elemental is flexible and allows platform teams to perform all kind of workflows across their fleet of machines.

## Elemental with Rancher Prime 

- Deeply integrated already as GUI Extension in Rancher. 
- Extends the Rancher story to the OS. Working perfectly with SLE Micro for Rancher today.
 