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Version: v0.33 Stable

vCluster Standalone

Supported Configurations
Running the control plane as a binary with vCluster Standalone. When scaling with additional worker nodes, they are joined as private nodes.

vCluster Standalone is a different architecture model for vCluster where the control plane runs directly on your infrastructure with no dependency on an existing Control Plane Cluster. vCluster is deployed directly onto nodes like other Kubernetes distributions. vCluster Standalone can run on any type of node, whether that is a bare-metal node or VM. It provides the strictest tenant isolation as there is no shared Control Plane Cluster for the control plane or worker nodes.

When using vCluster Standalone, the control plane runs on its own independent node rather than as a pod on a shared cluster. Worker nodes must be private nodes.


Comparison of traditional vCluster (control plane as pod) versus vCluster Standalone (control plane as binary on dedicated nodes)

Resource requirements​

vCluster Standalone can be deployed on bare metal, virtual machines, or containers. The minimal recommended resource requirements for vCluster Standalone are as follows:

  • 0.2 vCPU
  • 512 MiB of RAM
  • 1 GiB of ephemeral storage
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These are minimal requirements suitable for testing and development. Production deployments should be sized based on your specific workload, cluster size, and the number of tenant clusters you plan to run.

Installation overview​

vCluster Standalone requires its own node for the control plane. You can add additional nodes later as workers.

StepSummary
1. Install control plane nodeInstall the initial control plane node on your infrastructure.
2. Join control plane nodes (optional)Join additional control plane nodes for HA.
3. Join worker nodes (optional)Join worker nodes as private nodes.
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Self-managed Standalone clusters can later be connected to vCluster Platform. Once connected, configuration updates and version upgrades can be coordinated from the platform with rolling upgrades, while node management remains self-managed.

Install the control plane →