Data plane installation
The data plane (the Controller and the AI Gateway) is installed into a Kubernetes cluster and connected to the management plane.
Choose the install path
Three paths install the same data plane; they differ in what drives the cluster.
| Path | Fits | Guide |
|---|---|---|
tetrate CLI | A managed cloud cluster (AKS, EKS, GKE) and an operator who can run a vendor binary. The CLI carries the chart, runs the preflight checks, and applies directly. | The cloud guides below |
| Helm, no CLI | A cluster where only Helm and a private registry are allowed. The chart is pulled as an OCI artifact and the release lifecycle is owned by the platform team. | Helm installation guide |
| GitOps | Flux, Argo CD, or any pipeline that reconciles committed manifests. The manifests tetrate agentrouter dataplane install would apply are rendered for review and committed; since 0.3.0 the CRDs ship as their own chart (dataplane-crds-helm) so they can sync as a separate Application, and tetrate agentrouter dataplane install --post-renderer covers clusters that need manifest rewrites. | Retrieve data plane resources |
A self-managed cluster (k3s, kubeadm, OpenShift) is not a fourth path: it is the Helm or GitOps path plus generic gateway exposure instead of a cloud load balancer.
Prerequisites
Every guide assumes three things are already in place:
- The prerequisites confirmed: access, accounts, cloud quotas, and network rules.
- Management plane onboarding complete through Step 5, which produces the data plane credential file (
data-plane-credentials-default.json). Once the data plane is running, that credential is rotated and revoked through the procedures in Data plane credentials. - A provisioned Kubernetes cluster meeting the Kubernetes version requirement. Cluster provisioning is not covered by Tetrate support.
The supported self-hosted model today is a dedicated cluster for Tetrate Agent Router: the data plane (Controller and AI Gateway) does not run alongside other application workloads. Every guide below assumes that shape.
Select a guide by target
Azure using tetrate CLI
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) using the tetrate CLI, the recommended AKS path where the CLI is available.
Azure using Helm
AKS using Helm, for environments that require a private container registry such as Azure Container Registry.
Azure Helm guide →AWS using tetrate CLI
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) using the tetrate CLI.
GCP using tetrate CLI
Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) using the tetrate CLI.
Helm (cloud-agnostic)
Any Kubernetes cluster, for platform teams that own the Helm release lifecycle and maintain a private container registry (Harbor, JFrog Artifactory, Nexus, or Google Artifact Registry).
Helm installation guide →Companion workflow
Where to go next