Ascend Instance
The Ascend Instance is the top-level resource that contains all your Ascend resources like Environments, Workspaces, and Deployments. An Ascend 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 Ascend Instance has an associated Instance Store where Ascend stores metadata. Ascend supports using your BigQuery, Databricks, or Snowflake data platform as your Instance Store so that you can query and analyze your Ascend metadata directly.
Instance Vault​
Each Instance has a Vault associated with it used for:
- Secrets for the Instance Store, e.g., your Snowflake password or key
- Secrets for Otto (AI), e.g., your OpenAI API key
By default, the Ascend Instance Vault is managed by Ascend in Ascend Cloud. You may self-host any supported Vault as your Instance Vault if you prefer.