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What are Infrastructure Providers?

Datum uses a plugin-based architecture to integrate with cloud providers and infrastructure platforms. Infrastructure provider plugins interpret Datum resource definitions (like Workload and Network) and translate them into provider-specific resources such as virtual machines, VPCs, and container instances. This approach allows you to:

Provider Agnostic

Define your infrastructure once using Datum resources, then deploy across multiple providers without changing your configuration

Kubernetes Native

Leverage familiar Kubernetes patterns and tooling like kubectl, kustomize, and Helm to manage infrastructure

Extensible

Build custom provider plugins to integrate with any infrastructure platform or internal systems

Declarative

Declare your desired infrastructure state and let Datum operators reconcile the actual state automatically

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How Provider Plugins Work

Provider plugins are Kubernetes operators that watch for Datum resource changes and reconcile them against the target infrastructure platform.
1

Define Resources

You create Datum resources like Workload or Network using standard Kubernetes manifests or tools like kubectl.
2

Plugin Reconciliation

The provider plugin watches for these resources and interprets them based on placement rules and provider-specific configuration.
3

Infrastructure Provisioning

The plugin creates and manages the actual infrastructure resources (VMs, networks, load balancers) in the target provider.
4

Status Reporting

The plugin updates the Datum resource status to reflect the actual state of the provisioned infrastructure.

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Supported Features

Datum provider plugins typically support the following capabilities:

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Compute Management

  • VM-based workloads: Deploy virtual machine instances with custom OS images from an image library
  • Container-based workloads: Deploy sandboxed container instances using any OCI-compliant container image
  • Placement control: Define where instances should run across locations and providers
  • Scaling behavior: Configure auto-scaling and instance count management

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Network Management

  • VPC connectivity: Create and manage Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) networks
  • IPAM: Automated IP Address Management for subnets and instances
  • Multi-network attachment: Attach instances to one or more networks
  • Network policy: Apply network security policies and firewall rules

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Storage Management

  • Volume mounts: Attach persistent volumes to workload instances
  • Storage classes: Support for different storage types and performance tiers

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Available Providers

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Official GCP provider supporting VM instances, container instances, and VPC networking

Custom Providers

Build your own provider plugin for AWS, Azure, or custom infrastructure platforms

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Architecture

Datum infrastructure providers follow the Kubernetes operator pattern: 
apiVersion: workload.datum.net/v1alpha1
kind: Workload
metadata:
  name: my-app
  namespace: my-project
spec:
  template:
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: app
          image: gcr.io/my-project/my-app:v1.0
  placement:
    providers:
      - gcp
    regions:
      - us-central1
  replicas: 3
The GCP provider plugin watches this Workload resource and creates:
  1. Google Compute Engine instances or Cloud Run instances
  2. Instance templates with the specified container image
  3. Network interfaces attached to Datum VPC networks
  4. Health checks and auto-scaling configurations

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Next Steps

GCP Provider

Deploy workloads and networks on Google Cloud Platform

Build Custom Providers

Create your own infrastructure provider plugin

Workload Concepts

Learn more about Datum’s Workload resource

Network Concepts

Understand how Datum manages networks

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