A minimal immutable VM image which is finely tuned and hardened is the exact approach we're taking with https://on-premises.com - except we haven't focused on k8s workloads. We've found that customers would much rather import a VM than "install" something, however there are valid use-cases which require special monitoring tools and other customizations which are not possible on an immutable system. Gravity is interesting and seems to meet that demand.
This look interesting, is there a way to try out meta without being funneled into the sales pipeline?
What is the workflow for baking a machine? Are you using packer under the covers or some other tooling? What on-prem machine image formats are supported?
There's still a bit of "manual" work to get someone up and running on our Meta appliance, so unfortunately you would have to go through our sales process. However if you just want a video or screen recording of how it works then I can put something online in the next hour or two.
For baking the machine, we use Ansible under the covers and have a set of Lisp scripts to manage everything. As for image formats: qcow2, raw, vhd (and vmdk in the .ova file).
Not trying to hijack Gravitational's thread, please contact me (email in profile, or 'aw-' on FreeNode) if you want to discuss more.
