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S3 — Bring Your Own Cluster (BYOC)

Your team already runs Kubernetes (EKS, AKS, GKE, or self-managed). This scenario skips AWS provisioning and just installs the OpenBox Helm chart onto the cluster you already operate.

When to pick S3​

  • You have a mature K8s platform team already running production workloads
  • You want to skip cluster provisioning + IaC (your team already owns those decisions)
  • You need to reuse existing shared infra (RDS, monitoring, secrets management)

When NOT to pick S3​

  • Your cluster is < Kubernetes 1.27 — upgrade first or pick a different scenario
  • You need an air-gapped install → post-MVP scenario S4 (not yet documented)
  • Your cluster is missing an ingress controller and you don't want to add one → pick S2 Fresh AWS instead

Assumed environment​

  • Kubernetes cluster ≥ 1.27 with kubectl context configured
  • A default StorageClass with ReadWriteOnce volumes
  • An Ingress controller installed (Istio / NGINX / ALB Controller / Traefik)
  • metrics-server deployed (verify via kubectl top nodes)
  • (Optional but recommended) cert-manager, External Secrets Operator, Argo Rollouts

Full checklist in Prerequisites checklist →.

Overview of the flow​

  1. Cluster requirements → — versions, addons, capabilities
  2. Prerequisites checklist → — 10-item copy-paste-friendly verification
  3. Helm install → — chart deps + install command + common overrides
  4. Ingress & TLS → — pick Istio / NGINX / ALB and configure TLS

Cost estimate​

Your cluster already exists — incremental OpenBox cost is ~$500-1,500/mo (mostly ML model-hosts + guardrails GPU if enabled). See System requirements → Cluster sizing.