Build for Production

vCluster 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?

You are building	Where to start	Worker-node model
Managed inference endpoints on GPU infrastructure for customers	Inference Provider: Managed Model Serving	Private nodes
A managed Kubernetes service for paying customers on GPU infrastructure	AI Cloud: Managed Kubernetes Service	Private nodes
An internal AI platform for your organization's R&D and engineering teams	Enterprise AI Factory	Private nodes for production ML teams; shared nodes for trusted internal dev/experiment tiers
A unified GPU operations layer across multiple compute sources or suppliers	Distributed Compute Aggregation	Private nodes
A shared Kubernetes platform for internal engineering teams and services	Internal Kubernetes Platform	Shared nodes, trusted internal tenants only
Ephemeral isolated clusters for CI/CD pipelines with automatic cleanup	CI/CD Platform	Shared nodes, trusted internal tenants only
A dedicated cluster stack per enterprise customer	Single-Tenant Per Customer	Private nodes
Tenant workloads at distributed edge sites from a central control plane	Edge Distribution	Private nodes

Not sure which model your offering needs? Choose a worker node model walks through the customer-access questions that decide it.

If you are not sure which path fits, start with Architecture and Building a GPU cloud platform.

What production-ready means

A production vCluster platform delivers:

• Tenant isolation: 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
• 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 or CI cluster behavior	Use vind for CI only. Choose a path above based on your production use case.
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), Single-Tenant Per Customer
Standalone	Control plane cluster on bare metal or VMs	Inference Provider, AI Cloud, Distributed Compute Aggregation, Enterprise AI Factory (on-premises)

Day 2 operations reference

Common operations that apply across all paths.

Operation	Read next
Monitor Platform and tenant workloads	Monitoring overview, fleet monitoring
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