Concepts
Three mental models that show up across every Compute Providers page.
Cloud account
A cloud account is a named credential binding between Vantage and a compute provider. It stores only what Vantage needs to provision and deprovision resources — an IAM role ARN for AWS, a service principal for Azure, a service account key for GCP. One cloud account can back multiple clusters.
Providers
Vantage supports six provider types:
| Provider | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Amazon Web Services | Elastic cloud compute; spot instances, reserved capacity, global regions |
| Microsoft Azure | Enterprise cloud; Active Directory integration, hybrid connectivity |
| Google Cloud Platform | AI/ML-focused cloud; fast networking, preemptible VMs |
| Cudo Compute | Cost-efficient GPU cloud; on-demand and reserved options |
| LXD | System containers on your own infrastructure; fast, isolated Linux environments |
| On-Premises | Your own data center; maximum control, data residency |
Validity
Every cloud account has a validity state. Vantage checks that it can still reach the credentials on each use.
An account becomes invalid when credentials change — the IAM role is deleted, a service principal expires, or permissions are revoked. Invalid accounts are flagged in the Cloud Accounts list. Clusters backed by an invalid account will fail to provision new nodes.
For AWS, the IAM role ARN itself doesn't expire — but deleting the role or changing its trust policy will invalidate the account. Review IAM role permissions before making changes to your AWS account.