ADR-001: Physical Cluster Per Client¶
Status: Approved
Date: 2026-06-30
Decision¶
Each client receives a dedicated physical Kubernetes cluster (EKS/GKE/AKS or bare-metal), not a virtual cluster or shared-tenant namespace.
Rationale¶
- Full etcd, node, and network isolation
- No "noisy neighbor" risk
- Clients can be granted read-only cluster access for audit/transparency
- Simpler IAM integration (IRSA, Workload Identity, etc.)
- Aligns with enterprise procurement expectations
Trade-offs¶
- Higher cost per client (~$200-400/mo control plane + nodes vs. ~$50-100/mo for vCluster)
- More cluster lifecycle management overhead
Mitigation¶
- Cloud costs passed through to client; 7KGroup fee is platform management layer
- Offer single-node (non-HA) "development" clusters to reduce cost
- Use spot/preemptible instances for non-production workloads