Tiers & Storage
Deployment tiers, storage types, cluster modes, and availability options
Every deployment is provisioned with a tier that determines its compute resources, a storage type that determines its disk performance, a cluster type for availability, and an availability mode for zone distribution.
Deployment Tiers
| Tier | Best For | Cluster Support |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Getting started, development, testing | Standalone only |
| Small | Small teams, prototypes, light production | Standalone only |
| Medium | Growing businesses, steady production traffic | Standalone only |
| Large | Demanding production applications | Standalone and Replica |
| XLarge | Enterprise-grade, mission-critical workloads | Standalone and Replica |
| Compute Optimized | CPU-intensive: batch processing, analytics | Standalone and Replica |
| Network Optimized | Network-intensive: real-time processing, ultra-low latency | Standalone and Replica |
| Storage Optimized | I/O-intensive: high-throughput storage workloads | Standalone and Replica |
| Ultimate | Maximum performance across all dimensions | Standalone and Replica |
Higher tiers unlock more storage options, higher network throughput, and Replica cluster support.
Network Rate Limits
Certain tiers include network rate limits:
| Tier | Rate Limit | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 100 KB/s | Always rate limited, regardless of plan |
| Small | 1 MB/s | Basic plan only — rate limit removed once upgraded to Pro or Enterprise |
| Medium | 10 MB/s | Basic plan only — rate limit removed once upgraded to Pro or Enterprise |
| Large and above | No limit | — |
The Free tier is always rate limited. Small and Medium tiers are only available with rate limits on the Basic plan — once your tenant is upgraded to a higher plan, these rate limits are removed and higher tiers become available.
Resources by Tier
| Tier | vCPUs | Memory | Local SSD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 2 | 1 GB | — |
| Small | 2 | 2 GB | — |
| Medium | 2 | 8 GB | — |
| Large | 4 | 32 GB | 150 GB NVMe |
| XLarge | 8 | 64 GB | 475 GB NVMe |
| Compute Optimized | 16 | 32 GB | 950 GB NVMe |
| Network Optimized | 16 | 128 GB | 950 GB NVMe |
| Storage Optimized | 16 | 128 GB | 3.75 TB NVMe |
| Ultimate | 32 | 256 GB | 1.9 TB NVMe |
Local SSD sizes apply when using Local SSD storage type. Network storage sizes are configurable independently.
Cluster Types
| Type | Nodes | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Standalone | 1 | Single node, available on all tiers. Suitable for development, staging, and cost-sensitive production. |
| Replica | 2 | Two-node cluster with synchronous replication and automatic failover. Available on Large tier and above. Requires Pro or Enterprise plan. |
With a Replica cluster, if the primary node fails, the secondary takes over automatically — no manual intervention required.
Storage Types
| Storage Type | Description | Persistence |
|---|---|---|
| Network Balanced | General-purpose persistent storage with balanced IOPS and throughput | Persistent |
| Network Optimized | Higher IOPS persistent storage for demanding workloads | Persistent |
| Network Extreme | Maximum IOPS and throughput persistent storage | Persistent |
| Local SSD | High-performance NVMe instance storage directly attached to the host | Ephemeral |
Storage Availability by Tier
When creating a deployment, the storage types available depend on the tier:
| Tier | Network Balanced | Network Optimized | Network Extreme | Local SSD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Yes | Yes | — | — |
| Small | Yes | Yes | — | — |
| Medium | Yes | Yes | — | — |
| Large | Yes | Yes | — | Yes |
| XLarge | Yes | Yes | — | Yes |
| Compute Optimized | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Network Optimized | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Storage Optimized | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Ultimate | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
At higher tiers you get the choice between persistent network storage (three performance levels) and raw NVMe Local SSD. Network Extreme is reserved for the Optimized and Ultimate tiers where the underlying infrastructure supports the highest IOPS.
Storage Sizes
- Network storage: configurable from 20 GB up to multi-TB. IOPS and throughput are automatically tuned based on the tier.
- Local SSD: size is fixed by the tier — ranges from 150 GB (Large) to 3.75 TB (Storage Optimized).
Local SSD delivers the lowest possible latency by bypassing the network storage layer entirely — ideal for ultra-low latency streaming workloads. Data on Local SSD is ephemeral (does not survive instance termination), but with Replica clusters (coming soon), data is replicated across nodes, eliminating the durability concern.
Availability Modes
| Mode | Description | Requirements |
|---|---|---|
| Single-AZ | All nodes deployed in a single availability zone. Lower cost, suitable for development and non-critical workloads. | None |
| Multi-AZ | Nodes distributed across multiple availability zones for high availability. Recommended for production. | Replica cluster, Pro or Enterprise plan |
Multi-AZ ensures that an availability zone outage does not take down your deployment.
Choosing a Configuration
Development / Testing
- Tier: Free or Small
- Cluster: Standalone
- Storage: Network Balanced
- Availability: Single-AZ
Production
- Tier: Large or higher
- Cluster: Replica (for HA) or Standalone (for cost)
- Storage: Network Balanced or Network Optimized
- Availability: Multi-AZ (for Replica clusters)
High-Performance / Low-Latency
- Tier: Compute Optimized, Network Optimized, or Ultimate
- Cluster: Standalone or Replica
- Storage: Local SSD or Network Extreme
- Availability: Multi-AZ recommended
Plan Requirements
| Feature | Basic | Pro | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standalone clusters | All tiers | All tiers | All tiers |
| Replica clusters | — | Available | Available |
| Multi-AZ | — | Available | Available |
| Max deployments | 2 | 10 | 20 |