Compute

Compute infrastructure in ModStack is represented by Clusters. A Cluster is the unit of compute that hosts everything your application needs to run — services, scheduled jobs, ephemeral storage, sidecars, and the supporting workloads that keep them healthy.

What is a Cluster?

A Cluster is the runtime substrate for a ModStack Environment. Every workload you deploy — long-running services, one-off jobs, background workers — lands on a Cluster. Clusters also provide the ephemeral storage and networking primitives that those workloads rely on at runtime.

ModStack supports three kinds of Clusters. They are interchangeable from the perspective of your application: the same service definitions and Modules run on all of them. What differs is where the compute lives and what it is optimised for.

Where your Clusters physically live — managed by ModStack or in your own cloud — is controlled by your Project's hosting model. See Hosted vs BYOC for details.

Cluster Types

Single Node Clusters BYOC only

An individual server — bare-metal, VM, or otherwise — running as a self-contained Cluster. Sometimes called a SingleNode cluster. Ideal for small workloads, edge deployments, testing and staging deployments, or environments where running a full Kubernetes cluster would be overkill.

Kubernetes Clusters Hosted or BYOC

A managed Kubernetes cluster that hosts your workloads. ModStack integrates with the major managed-Kubernetes services so you can run on the provider of your choice — today on Amazon EKS, with AKS, GKE, and DigitalOcean Kubernetes coming soon.

Local Dev Clusters Developer machine

A Cluster that runs entirely on a developer's own machine, with full feature compatibility with the production Kubernetes environment. Optimised for the inner-loop debugging workflow — including Telepresence-style service redirection — and can be started and stopped on demand.

Cluster Type	Hosting	Primary Use
Single Node	BYOC only	Lightweight production or edge deployments on individual servers.
Kubernetes	Hosted by ModStack or BYOC	The default for production workloads at any meaningful scale.
Local Dev	Developer machine only	Inner-loop development and debugging with production parity.