vcluster

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CNCF Certified Kubernetes · Distribution · Kubernetes AI Conformant

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About

vCluster creates Tenant Clusters: fully isolated environments delivered as managed Kubernetes, or as the foundation for Slurm, Ray, Run:ai and inference clusters. Each gets its own API server, CRDs and RBAC, and runs on an existing cluster or standalone on bare metal. CNCF Certified Kubernetes.

Every cluster becomes a product you can ship. Sell it to customers or serve it to internal teams from the same platform, with each tenant seeing only their own cluster and nothing else. The control plane stays invisible to tenants: no shared control plane nodes, no in-cluster agent pods, and no lateral path between environments.

Because a Tenant Cluster is upstream Kubernetes, everything built for the standard API works against it unmodified: kubectl, Helm, Argo, Crossplane, operators, and CRDs.

40M+ Tenant Clusters deployed. vCluster runs in production at Adobe, CoreWeave, NVIDIA, Nebius, Lintasarta, Atlan, Deloitte, and across 50+ AI clouds and Fortune 500 platform organizations, powering 100K+ GPUs and 1M+ CPUs.

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🚀 Quick start

# Install the vCluster CLI
brew install loft-sh/tap/vcluster

# Create a Tenant Cluster
vcluster create my-vcluster --namespace team-x

# Use kubectl as usual. You are now inside your Tenant Cluster.
kubectl get namespaces

Prerequisites: a running Kubernetes cluster and kubectl configured.

👉 Full quickstart guide

🐳 Run locally on Docker with vind

No Kubernetes cluster? Run a complete Tenant Cluster in Docker containers with vind (vCluster in Docker). Like kind, but with the full vCluster feature set: UI, sleep and resume, LoadBalancer, image cache, and external nodes joining over VPN.

vcluster create my-vcluster --driver docker
kubectl get namespaces

🎮 Try it in the browser

🎁 vCluster free tier

Real usage, not a gated demo. Unlimited Tenant Clusters up to 64 CPUs and 32 GPUs, plus the full vCluster Platform UI, for free. Get started free →

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🧩 Every kind of cluster

One platform turns raw compute into the cluster type each tenant actually asks for. Kubernetes is the foundation; the rest are delivered on top of it.

Cluster type	What a tenant gets
Kubernetes Clusters	A dedicated, CNCF-certified Kubernetes cluster with its own API server, CRDs, and RBAC
Nested Clusters	Tenant Clusters running on the Control Plane Cluster's shared nodes for maximum density
Inference Clusters	Serving stacks such as Dynamo and llm-d, isolated per tenant
Ray Clusters	Ray for distributed training and data processing, isolated per tenant
Run:ai Clusters	Run:ai scheduling on top of an isolated Tenant Cluster
Slurm Clusters (Beta)	Managed Slurm for HPC and batch training
Agent Sandbox Clusters (Coming soon)	Isolated clusters for agentic and untrusted code execution

Slurm, Ray, Run:ai, inference, and agent sandbox clusters are delivered through vCluster Platform. This repository is the open-source engine that every one of them is built on.

👉 See all cluster types

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🏗️ Architectures

vCluster supports multiple deployment architectures. Two things vary independently: where the control plane runs (an existing Kubernetes cluster, a standalone binary, or Docker) and how tenant workloads are placed (shared nodes or private nodes). The modes below combine them, offering progressively stronger isolation from dense shared infrastructure through to fully standalone deployments on bare metal.

Architecture comparison

	Shared Nodes	Dedicated Nodes	Private Nodes	Standalone
Control Plane Cluster	Required	Required	Required	Not required
Node isolation	❌	✅	✅	✅
CNI/CSI isolation	❌	❌	✅	✅
Bare metal ready	·	·	✅	✅
Best for	Dev/test, density	Production tenants	Compliance, GPU	AI factories, edge

👉 Full architecture guide

Minimal configuration

sync:
  fromHost:
    nodes:
      enabled: false  # Uses pseudo nodes

sync:
  fromHost:
    nodes:
      enabled: true
      selector:
        labels:
          tenant: my-tenant

privateNodes:
  enabled: true
controlPlane:
  service:
    spec:
      type: NodePort

controlPlane:
  standalone:
    enabled: true
    joinNode:
      enabled: true
privateNodes:
  enabled: true

autoNodes:
  enabled: true
  nodeProvider: <provider>
privateNodes:
  enabled: true

vcluster create my-vcluster --driver docker

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✨ Key features

Feature	Description
🎛️ Its own API server, per tenant	Every Tenant Cluster runs a dedicated control plane: API server, controller manager, and data store. Full Kubernetes API isolation, not a namespace with rules layered on top
🔒 Strong tenant isolation	Tenants hold admin inside their Tenant Cluster while holding minimal permissions on the Control Plane Cluster
🎮 GPU-aware scheduling	Dynamic Resource Allocation with resource claims, resource claim templates, and device classes, plus in-place pod resizing
⚡ Auto Nodes	Karpenter-powered provisioning and deprovisioning of private nodes across cloud, hybrid, and bare metal, with per-pool node profiles
🖥️ Standalone deployment	Run without a Control Plane Cluster on dedicated infrastructure or bare metal, purpose-built for AI factories and on-prem GPU fleets
🐳 Runs on Docker	A complete Tenant Cluster in Docker containers with no Kubernetes dependency, through vcluster create --driver docker
🔐 Node VPN (Platform)	Private nodes join over an encrypted overlay, so a single Tenant Cluster can span sites, networks, and clouds
📸 Snapshot and restore	Snapshot a Tenant Cluster to S3, OCI, Azure Blob, or local storage, and restore it elsewhere
💤 Sleep mode (Platform)	Pause inactive Tenant Clusters to save resources, with instant wake when needed
🔗 Shared platform stack (Shared / Dedicated Nodes)	Reuse the Control Plane Cluster's CNI, CSI, ingress, and other infrastructure, with no duplicate platform components
🔄 Resource syncing (Shared / Dedicated Nodes)	Bidirectional sync of any Kubernetes resource: pods, services, secrets, configmaps, CRDs, and Gateway API objects
🧩 Integrations	Native support for cert-manager, external-secrets, KubeVirt, Istio, and metrics-server
📊 High availability	Multiple replicas with leader election. Embedded etcd or external databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, RDS)

Shared platform stack, resource syncing, and Control Plane Cluster integrations apply in Shared and Dedicated Nodes modes, where the Tenant Cluster reuses the Control Plane Cluster's CNI, CSI, and platform stack. Private Nodes and Standalone deployments bring their own CNI, CSI, and platform components.

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🆕 What's new

Version	Feature	Description
v0.36	Gateway API and node profiles	Gateway API sync for Tenant Clusters, node profiles for private nodes, and a pinnable standalone advertise address
v0.35	Snapshots and Kubernetes 1.36	etcd v3 snapshot facilities for embedded etcd, wildcard custom resource proxy, kine metrics, Kubernetes v1.36
v0.34	Multi-region platform and standalone snapshots	Active/active vCluster Platform across regions (Route 53 + RDS), standalone snapshots (S3 / OCI / local), first-class template parameters
v0.33	Enterprise reliability and storage	Automatic leaf-cert regeneration, Azure Blob snapshot destinations, workload-level sleep annotations
v0.32	Docker driver and DRA	Run vCluster on Docker, Dynamic Resource Allocation (DRA) for GPU workloads, in-place pod resizing
v0.27–v0.31	Architecture foundations	Private Nodes (v0.27), Auto Nodes (v0.28), Standalone (v0.29), vCluster VPN and Netris (v0.30), snapshot and cross-cluster APIs (v0.31)

👉 Full changelog

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🎯 Who runs vCluster

Use case	What it solves	Learn more
AI cloud providers	Launch a hyperscaler-like managed cluster experience for GPU customers. Automate tenant, cluster, and bare metal provisioning end to end.	View →
AI factories	Run AI on-prem where your data and GPUs live. Give every team the GPU access they need without multiplying infrastructure.	View →
Internal GPU platforms	Maximize GPU utilization without sacrificing isolation. Self-service Kubernetes for AI/ML teams.	View →
Distributed inference	Isolated, production-grade serving stacks per tenant, per model, or per customer.	View →
Sovereign clouds	Data residency and tenant isolation enforced at the infrastructure layer.	View →
Bare metal Kubernetes	Run production Kubernetes on bare metal with zero VMs. Isolation without virtualization overhead.	View →
Software vendors	Ship Kubernetes-native products. Each customer gets their own isolated Tenant Cluster.	View →
Environments and cost savings	Consolidate clusters, pause idle workloads with sleep mode, and cut Kubernetes cost at scale.	View →

Start turnkey with the vCluster Platform UI and CLI, or call the APIs and put your own portal and brand in front. It is a two-way door, with no re-platforming.

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🌐 The vCluster stack

vCluster is the foundation of a broader platform for running Kubernetes and AI infrastructure on your own hardware, from a single rack to 100K-GPU superclusters.

Product	What it does
vCluster	Tenant Clusters. A dedicated control plane per tenant, with API, data, and optionally network isolation
vNode	Runtime-level isolation. Kernel-enforced boundaries (Linux user namespaces, seccomp, cgroups, AppArmor) without VM overhead
vMetal	Bare metal provisioning and lifecycle for GPU fleets. Turns GPU racks into a cloud platform
Netris (integration)	Hardware-enforced network isolation via programmatic VLANs, VRFs, and ACLs

Together they provide the full stack for an AI factory: certified Kubernetes, isolated Tenant Clusters, runtime workload sandboxing, and GPU infrastructure operations. The ClusterMAX™ security criteria call for strong isolation between tenants, and name vNode Private Nodes.

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🏢 Trusted by

Also used by: Adobe, NVIDIA, ABBYY, Precisely, Shipwire, and many more, with 50+ GPU clouds and Fortune 500s running vCluster in production.

👉 View all case studies

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📚 Learn more

Event	Speaker	Title	Link
NVIDIA GTC 2026	Lukas Gentele	Build a Software-Defined Multi-Tenant NVLinked Cluster	Watch
KubeCon NA 2025 (Keynote)	Lukas Gentele	Autoscaling GPU Clusters Anywhere	Watch
Platform Engineering Day NA 2025 (Keynote)	Saiyam Pathak	AI-Ready Platforms: Scaling Teams Without Scaling Costs	Watch
Rejekts NA 2025	Hrittik Roy, Saiyam Pathak	Beyond the Default Scheduler: Navigating GPU MultiTenancy in AI Era	Watch
KubeCon EU 2025	Paco Xu, Saiyam Pathak	A Huge Cluster or Multi-Clusters? Identifying the Bottleneck	Watch
HashiConf 2025	Scott McAllister	GPU sharing done right: Secrets, security, and scaling with Vault and vCluster	Watch
FOSDEM 2025	Hrittik Roy, Saiyam Pathak	Accelerating CI Pipelines: Rapid Kubernetes Testing with vCluster	Watch
KubeCon India 2024 (Keynote)	Saiyam Pathak	From Outage To Observability: Lessons From a Kubernetes Meltdown	Watch
CNCF Book Club 2024	Marc Boorshtein	Kubernetes: An Enterprise Guide (vCluster)	Watch
KCD NYC 2024	Lukas Gentele	Tenant Autonomy & Isolation In Multi-Tenant Kubernetes Clusters	Watch
KubeCon EU 2023	Ilia Medvedev, Kostis Kapelonis	How We Securely Scaled Multi-Tenancy with VCluster, Crossplane, and Argo CD	Watch
KubeCon NA 2022	Joseph Sandoval, Dan Garfield	How Adobe Planned For Scale With Argo CD, Cluster API, And VCluster	Watch
KubeCon NA 2022	Whitney Lee, Mauricio Salatino	What a RUSH! Let's Deploy Straight to Production!	Watch
TGI Kubernetes 2022	TGI	TGI Kubernetes 188: vCluster	Watch
Mirantis Tech Talks 2022	Mirantis	Multi-tenancy & Isolation using Virtual Clusters (vCluster) in K8s	Watch
Solo Webinar 2022	Rich Burroughs, Fabian Keller	Speed your Istio development environment with vCluster	Watch
KubeCon NA 2021	Lukas Gentele	Beyond Namespaces: Virtual Clusters are the Future of Multi-Tenancy	Watch

Channel	Speaker	Title	Link
TeKanAid 2024	TeKanAid	Getting Started with vCluster: Build Your IDP with Backstage, Crossplane, and ArgoCD	Watch
Rawkode 2021	David McKay, Lukas Gentele	Hands on Introduction to vCluster	Watch
Kubesimplify 2021	Saiyam Pathak, Lukas Gentele	Let's Learn vCluster	Watch
TechWorld with Nana 2021	Nana	Build your Self-Service Kubernetes Platform with Virtual Clusters	Watch
DevOps Toolkit 2021	Viktor Farcic	How To Create Virtual Kubernetes Clusters	Watch

Featured in 4 books on Kubernetes and platform engineering.

👉 YouTube channel · Blog · Resources

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🤝 Contributing

We welcome contributions. Check out the contributing guide to get started.

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💬 Connect with us

• Join our Slack community, 5K+ engineers
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• Watch on YouTube
• Read the blog
• Book a consultation

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📜 License

vCluster is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License.

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© 2026 vCluster Labs. All rights reserved.

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