Build for Production

vClustervClusterAn open-source software product that creates and manages tenant clusters within Kubernetes infrastructure. vCluster provides tenant isolation capabilities while reducing infrastructure costs.Related: Tenant cluster, Control plane cluster lets you provision isolated tenant clusters on your existing infrastructure without a separate physical cluster per tenant. This section maps the common production architectures to concrete implementation paths. Choose the one that matches what you are building and follow it from initial design to a running, operated platform.

Need to evaluate vCluster first?

Start with a quick start to prove the deployment model in your environment, then return here to plan production.

Choose your worker node model first

Shared and private nodes are a security boundary decision, locked at deployment time. Before you pick a path below, run through Choose a worker node model to confirm which one your offering requires.

What are you building?

Find the goal that matches your platform, then choose the desired outcome. The linked production path takes you from architecture decisions through Day 2 operations.

Offer AI or Kubernetes infrastructure to customers

Desired outcome	Start here	Worker-node guidance
Serve models through managed endpoints while your team operates the Kubernetes infrastructure	Inference Provider: Managed Model Serving	Private nodes for dedicated or customer-controlled serving. Shared nodes may suit provider-owned models with API-only access
Give customers isolated, GPU-backed Kubernetes environments through your product	AI Cloud: Managed Kubernetes Service	Private nodes for external customer workloads
Give each enterprise customer a dedicated cluster stack for node-level, regulated, or sovereign isolation	Single-Tenant Per Customer	Private nodes for node-level customer isolation

Build a platform for internal teams

Desired outcome	Start here	Worker-node guidance
Standardize governed GPU environments across production, development, and experiment tiers	Enterprise AI Factory	Private nodes for production. Shared nodes for trusted development and experiment tiers
Give trusted engineering teams long-running, isolated Kubernetes environments	Internal Kubernetes Platform	Shared nodes for trusted team workloads only
Give each CI/CD pipeline an ephemeral, isolated Kubernetes environment with automatic cleanup	CI/CD Platform	Shared nodes for trusted pipeline workloads only

Operate compute across providers or locations

Desired outcome	Start here	Worker-node guidance
Manage GPU capacity from multiple compute sources through one operations layer	Distributed Compute Aggregation	Private nodes for dedicated tenant capacity at each site
Manage tenant workloads at distributed edge sites from a central control plane	Edge Distribution	Private nodes for dedicated tenant capacity at edge sites

Not sure where to start? Use Choose a worker node model to decide between shared and private nodes. If no production path fits, review Architecture and Building a GPU cloud platform.

What production-ready means

A production vCluster platform delivers:

• Tenant isolationTenant IsolationThe capability to host multiple separate users, teams, or workloads on the same infrastructure while providing strong isolation between them. vCluster delivers tenant isolation through dedicated control planes, isolated resource namespaces, and optional private nodes per tenant.Related: Tenant cluster: every customer or team sees only their own cluster and workloads. Node level isolation requires private nodes
• Repeatable provisioning: new tenant clusters deploy from a defined template, not from manual steps. When each environment also needs the same ordered set of applications, use Stacks to standardize that software layer
• A worker node model matched to your isolation needs: private nodes for tenants with cluster, scheduler, or workload execution access, or shared nodes for trusted internal tenants or a provider-operated offering where you own all workloads. A dedicated node pool scopes placement within shared nodes. It doesn't provide private-node isolation. See Choose a worker node model.
• Governed access: who can create, access, and administer tenant clusters, enforced through Platform policies
• Durable control planes: HA, data store, and backup procedures defined before tenants depend on the system
• Operational readiness: monitoring, upgrade, restore, and incident response procedures documented and tested

Connect quick start results to production paths

Each quick start validates a specific deployment model. Use this table to connect what you proved to the production path that extends it.

If you completed	You have proven	Production paths to consider
Docker (vind)	Local development, testing, or CI cluster behavior	Use vind to validate cluster behavior, then choose a production path for deployment.
Shared Nodes	Tenant clusters on an existing Kubernetes cluster	Internal Kubernetes Platform, CI/CD Platform, or Enterprise AI Factory (shared tier)
Private Nodes	Tenant clusters with dedicated worker nodes	Inference Provider, AI Cloud, Enterprise AI Factory (production tier), Distributed Compute Aggregation, Single-Tenant Per Customer, or Edge Distribution
Standalone	Control plane cluster on bare metal or VMs	Inference Provider, AI Cloud, Distributed Compute Aggregation, Enterprise AI Factory (on-premises), or Edge Distribution

Day 2 operations reference

Common operations that apply across all paths.

Operation	Read next
Monitor Platform and tenant workloads	Fleet Observability, other architectures
Back up and restore tenant clusters	Snapshots, restore, Velero
Back up and restore Platform	Backup and restore Platform, Platform database
Upgrade Platform and tenant clusters	Upgrade vCluster, upgrade Platform, lifecycle policy
Rotate certificates	Certificate rotation
Manage private worker nodes	Manage private nodes, Auto Nodes
Scale and recover the platform	Platform HA, multi-region Platform
Troubleshoot incidents	vCluster troubleshoot, debug commands, Platform troubleshooting