Cluster Types & Regions in StreamNative Cloud

StreamNative offers various cluster types in the StreamNative Cloud. The type of cluster you choose impacts its features, capabilities, and cost. Use this guide to identify the cluster that best meets your requirements. StreamNative Cloud supports both Kafka Clusters and Pulsar Clusters. Kafka Clusters run native Apache Kafka protocol, while Pulsar Clusters support Pulsar protocol natively with optional Kafka compatibility through KSN. For help choosing between them, see Choose Kafka or Pulsar. For deployment models, use Serverless clusters for experimentation and early development. For a production cluster, choose from Dedicated (formerly Hosted) clusters, BYOC, or BYOC Pro clusters. The table below offers a high-level comparison of features across StreamNative Cloud cluster types. ¹ Contact StreamNative support for custom region requirements in Dedicated clusters. ² Dedicated Pro and BYOC Pro geo-replicated clusters achieve a 99.999% uptime SLA.

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Serverless Clusters

Serverless clusters are the newest addition to StreamNative Cloud, offering a fully managed, auto-scaling solution with minimal operational overhead. Key features include:

1. Instant provisioning with a minimum base cost of 1 ETU
2. Automatic scaling based on your workload, with billing only for resources used.
3. Simplified management with StreamNative handling all infrastructure concerns.
4. Ideal for development, testing, and production workloads with variable traffic patterns.

StreamNative uses Elastic Throughput Units (ETUs) to provision and bill for the Serverless clusters.

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ETU limits per Serverless cluster

Serverless clusters are elastic, shrinking and expanding automatically based on load. You don’t need to size your cluster. When you need more capacity, your Serverless cluster expands up to the fixed maximum. When no capacity is in use, a minimum charge of 1 ETU applies. Serverless cluster capacity If no capacity is consumed, the system defaults to a minimum billing level of 1 ETU. For more information, see Elastic Throughput Unit (ETU).

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ETU capacity guidance

The dimensions in the following table describe the capacity of a single ETU. For more information about ETU, see Elastic Throughput Unit (ETU) and ETU vs CU/SU.

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Serverless limits per cluster

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Serverless limits per partition

The partition capabilities that follow are based on benchmarking and intended as practical guidelines for planning purposes. Performance per partition will vary based on your specific configuration, and these benchmarks do not guarantee performance.

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Serverless Cloud Providers & Regions

Serverless clusters are currently available in limited regions. Please check the StreamNative Cloud console for the most up-to-date information on available regions.

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Serverless Features and Usage Limits

Here are some guidelines for the serverless cluster limits: In addition to the usage limits, there are some additional limitations in features:

1. Tiered Storage is transparent, meaning you don’t need to configure it. However, Serverless clusters don’t support bringing your own bucket. If you need to use your own object storage bucket, you should consider using BYOC or BYOC Pro clusters.
2. Serverless clusters use Rapid Release Channel by default. You can’t choose a different release channel.
3. Auto-scaling is enabled by default. You don’t need to configure it.
4. Remote writes to external observability systems are not supported.
5. Custom maintenance windows are not available.
6. Private networking options are not available.

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Dedicated Clusters

Dedicated (formerly Hosted) clusters are fully managed on StreamNative’s cloud infrastructure. They support the following capabilities:

1. Deployment in supported regions on AWS, GCP, and Azure with a 99.95% uptime SLA for Single-Zone and 99.99% for Multi-Zone.
2. Optional multi-zone high availability, spreading a cluster across three availability zones for enhanced resilience.
3. Simplified scaling in terms of Compute Units (CUs) and Storage Units (SUs).
4. Programmable or automatic scaling options.

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Dedicated Pro Offering

StreamNative offers a Pro offering within Dedicated clusters that provides enhanced networking and security capabilities for enterprise workloads. Dedicated Pro includes:

• Private Link: Secure private connectivity to your cluster
• VPC/VNet Peering: Connect your cluster to your existing network infrastructure
• Transit Gateway: Advanced network routing and connectivity options
• Remote writes: Send metrics to external observability systems
• Managed Flink: Stream processing capabilities (Private Preview, currently GCP only)
• Bring Your Own Key: Use your own encryption keys for data-at-rest encryption

Dedicated Pro maintains the same uptime SLAs and scaling capabilities as standard Dedicated clusters while providing additional enterprise-grade features.

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Dedicated Cloud Providers & Regions

The following is a list of cloud providers along with the regions and zones supported for Dedicated (formerly Hosted) Clusters:

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AWS

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GCP

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Azure

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Dedicated Features and Usage Limits

The following table outlines the features and usage limits for the Dedicated (formerly Hosted) Clusters:

Type	Features	Capability
Service	Uptime SLA	99.95%
	Multi AZ	99.99%
Scale	Throughput limit per topic	Max 100 MBps
	Storage limit per topic	Max 1000 TB
	Tenant limit	Max 128
	Namespace limit	Max 1024
	Topic limit	Max 10240
Cloud providers	GCP	Yes
	AWS	Yes
	Azure	Yes

In addition to the above, there are additional limitations in Dedicated (formerly Hosted) clusters:

1. Tiered Storage is transparent, meaning you don’t need to configure it. However, Dedicated clusters don’t support bringing your own bucket. If you need to use your own bucket, you should consider using BYOC or BYOC Pro clusters.
2. Remote writes to external observability systems are only available in Dedicated Pro.
3. Custom maintenance windows are not available.
4. Private networking options (Private Link, VPC/VNet Peering, Transit Gateway) are only available in Dedicated Pro.

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BYOC Clusters

BYOC clusters are designed for production-ready deployments in your Cloud account, tailored to meet your data security, compliance, and sovereignty requirements. They offer the following capabilities:

1. Dedicated deployments in your chosen region within your cloud account (AWS, GCP, Azure) with a 99.5% uptime SLA for Single-Zone and 99.99% for Multi-Zone.
2. Private networking options including AWS PrivateLink, Azure PrivateLink, and GCP Private Service Connect.
3. Optional multi-zone high availability, spreading a cluster across three availability zones for increased resilience.
4. Simplified scaling in terms of CUs and SUs.
5. Programmable or automatic scaling options.
6. You can choose between Latency Optimized Profile and Cost Optimized Profile.

StreamNative uses CU/SU to bill for the clusters with Latency Optimized Profile and uses Elastic Throughput Units (ETUs) to bill for the clusters with Cost Optimized Profile.

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BYOC Cloud Providers & Regions

A BYOC cluster can be deployed in any selected region in your cloud account across AWS, GCP, and Azure.

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BYOC Features and Usage Limits

1. The performance limit is majorly bound by the underlying resources of your cloud account.
2. You can use your own S3-compatible storage bucket for the clusters with Cost Optimized Profile or Lakehouse tiered storage for the clusters with Latency Optimized Profile.
3. You can use your own keys for data-at-rest encryption.
4. Only PrivateLink is supported for private networking. Other private networking options are not supported. You can manually configure them if you choose to use a different private networking option, but it will be out of scope for StreamNative support.
5. Geo-replication via private networking is not supported. Only public networking geo-replication is supported. If you need geo-replication via private networking, you should consider using BYOC Pro.
6. Remote writes to external observability systems are not supported.
7. Custom maintenance windows are not available.
8. Bring Your Own Network (BYON) is not supported. Only StreamNative-managed VPCs are available.
9. Custom DNS (Bring Your Own Domain) is not supported.

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ETU capacity guidance

The dimensions in the following table describe the capacity of a single ETU in a BYOC cluster. For more information about ETUs, see Elastic Throughput Unit (ETU) and ETU vs CU/SU.

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BYOC Pro Clusters

BYOC Pro Clusters are designed for critical production workloads and offer enhanced security and networking features, including:

1. Advanced private networking options like VPC/VNet Peering and Transit Gateway.
2. Remote writes to external observability systems.
3. Self-managed keys (Bring-Your-Own-Key) for AWS, Azure, or GCP.
4. Bring Your Own Network (BYON) — use your own VPC/VNet instead of a StreamNative-managed VPC.
5. Custom DNS (Bring Your Own Domain) — use your own DNS zone for cluster endpoints.

Similar to BYOC clusters, BYOC Pro uses CU/SU to bill for clusters with Latency Optimized Profile and uses Elastic Throughput Units (ETUs) for clusters with Cost Optimized Profile.

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BYOC Pro Cloud Providers & Regions

BYOC Pro Clusters can be deployed in any selected region in your cloud account across AWS, GCP, and Azure.

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BYOC Pro Features and Usage Limits

BYOC Pro is the most secure and flexible option, which provides you with full control over your data and network configurations.

1. The performance limit is majorly bound by the underlying resources of your cloud account.
2. You can use your own S3-compatible storage bucket for the clusters with Cost Optimized Profile or Lakehouse tiered storage for the clusters with Latency Optimized Profile.
3. You can use your own keys for data-at-rest encryption.
4. Private Link, VPC/VNet Peering, and Transit Gateway are supported for private networking.
5. Geo-replication via private networking is supported.

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ETU capacity guidance

The dimensions in the following table describe the capacity of a single ETU in a BYOC Pro cluster with Cost Optimized Profile . For more information about ETUs, see Elastic Throughput Unit (ETU) and ETU vs CU/SU.