Instance
An Ascend Instance is the top-level resource that contains all your Ascend resources: Environments, Workspaces, and Deployments. An Instance can be hosted in Ascend Cloud (managed by us) or self-hosted (managed by you on your infrastructure).
An Instance and its Environments act as security boundaries, allowing you to provide separate access for development, staging, and production data infrastructure.
Instance Store
Each Instance has an associated Instance Store where Ascend stores metadata. Ascend supports using BigQuery, Databricks, or Snowflake as your Instance Store so you can query and analyze Ascend metadata directly.
Instance Vault
Each Instance has a Vault used for:
- Secrets for the Instance Store (e.g., your Snowflake password or key)
- Secrets for Otto (e.g., your OpenAI API key)
By default, the Instance Vault is managed by Ascend in Ascend Cloud. You may self-host any supported Vault as your Instance Vault.