# Cluster

> A Kubernetes cluster deployed on AWS EKS that runs containerized workloads.

A *cluster* refers to a Kubernetes cluster deployed on AWS EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service).
It serves as the container orchestration platform for running application workloads within a
Panfactum environment.

Key characteristics:

- **One per environment-region pair**: Each combination of environment and AWS region gets its own cluster
- **Managed via EKS**: Panfactum uses AWS EKS for the Kubernetes control plane
- **Image caching**: Container images are pulled through an AWS ECR pull-through cache for reliability and performance
- **Cost**: A cluster costs approximately $75–150/month at minimum due to EKS and node costs

Clusters are bootstrapped using Panfactum's infrastructure modules and managed through
Terraform/OpenTofu. Once provisioned, the cluster hosts Panfactum's standard set of addons
(ingress, monitoring, secret management, etc.) before application workloads are deployed.