Create a Workload Cluster

Provision workload clusters for deploying applications and hosting environments.

Summary

Workload clusters run your applications and environments. Once you have a management cluster provisioned, you can create multiple workload clusters to organize your infrastructure by environment, team, or purpose.

Prerequisites

• Platform Admin or Team Admin role
• A management cluster provisioned for your organization
• A cloud account configured in your organization

Clusters Page Overview

After your management cluster is provisioned, the Clusters page shows a graph view of your cluster topology with the management cluster and any existing workload clusters.

From this page, click Add workload cluster to create a new cluster.

Create Workload Cluster

1. Navigate to Clusters in the left sidebar

2. Click Add workload cluster

3. The cluster creation form opens in a side panel:

Cluster Type

Choose the type of cluster to create:

• Physical: Full Kubernetes cluster with dedicated cloud infrastructure
• Virtual: Lightweight virtual cluster that shares resources with other clusters (faster to create, lower cost)

Cluster Configuration

1. Configure the cluster settings:

Hosted (Civo)

Field	Description	Example
Cluster name	Unique name for the cluster	development
Cloud account	Civo account to provision the cluster in	my-civo-account
Region	Civo region for the cluster	NYC1
Node size	Civo instance size for nodes	g4s.kube.large
Number of nodes	Initial node count (minimum 2 recommended)	2

note

Civo cluster types do not use AMI types or EC2 instance sizes. Select a Civo node size such as g4s.kube.small, g4s.kube.medium, or g4s.kube.large.

Self-Hosted (AWS)

Field	Description	Example
Cluster name	Unique name for the cluster	development
Cloud account	AWS account to provision the cluster in	development
Cloud region	AWS region for the cluster	us-west-2
AMI type	Amazon Machine Image type	AL2_x86_64
Instance size	EC2 instance type for nodes	m5.xlarge
Number of nodes	Initial node count (minimum 2 recommended)	2

1. Optionally select an environment for the cluster to host

Example Configuration

Here's an example of a filled form for a development cluster:

1. Click Add cluster to start provisioning

Monitor Provisioning

After clicking Add cluster, the form closes and the Clusters page shows your new cluster in a provisioning state:

Workload cluster provisioning typically takes 15-20 minutes. You can:

• View provisioning progress in the cluster details panel
• Check the Logs tab for real-time provisioning output
• Monitor the cluster status in Argo CD

Instance Size Guidelines

Hosted (Civo)

Use Case	Recommended Node Size	Notes
Development	g4s.kube.small	Cost-effective for dev workloads
Staging	g4s.kube.medium	Match production sizing
Production	g4s.kube.large or larger	Size based on workload requirements

Self-Hosted (AWS)

Use Case	Recommended Instance	Notes
Development	m5.xlarge	Good balance for dev workloads
Staging	m5.xlarge - m5.2xlarge	Match production sizing
Production	m5.2xlarge or larger	Size based on workload requirements

Important Notes

• Physical clusters require more resources and take longer to provision than virtual clusters
• Cluster names must be unique within your organization
• You cannot change the cluster type after creation
• The minimum recommended node count is 2 for high availability

What's Next?

After your workload cluster is provisioned:

• Register applications to deploy to your cluster
• Create environments to organize your deployments
• Set up pipeline templates for automated deployments