Catalyst hosting options
Catalyst is an application orchestration platform built on top of the Dapr open-source project that can be hosted by Diagrid or run on a self-managed Kubernetes cluster. Catalyst centralizes the Dapr deployment in a Diagrid-operated or customer-operated Kubernetes cluster, where it is managed as part of the Catalyst platform. Your applications connect to the Catalyst data plane, which handles workflow execution, state management, distributed application coordination, and more.
System topology
Your applications integrate the Dapr SDKs—available in various languages—as a dependency to access the APIs for building durable workflows, AI agents, and Dapr-based distributed applications. These applications connect to the Catalyst platform, which is built on the open-source Dapr runtime and provides a centralized Dapr deployment. Operating independently from your application hosting environment, Catalyst oversees the execution process by preserving the source of truth for your workflow execution histories, state management, and distributed application coordination.
Catalyst has multiple hosting options:
☁️Catalyst Cloud
Fully managed SaaS with the entire platform hosted by Diagrid
🔒Catalyst Enterprise
Dedicated Catalyst environment with deployment options for the data plane, including Diagrid-managed, self-hosted, and air-gapped deployments
Regions and projects
Catalyst offers multiple layers of logical isolation to help you organize and manage your applications.
- Regions: The highest level of isolation, each being a physically isolated unit of the Catalyst data plane — a Kubernetes cluster that hosts a fully managed Dapr deployment and the backing infrastructure (key-value store, pub/sub, registry). Regions can be used to isolate different environments (e.g., dev, staging, prod), different teams or business units, or different applications with strict isolation requirements. A region contains a set of projects.
- Projects: Within each region, you can create multiple projects to further isolate applications, workflows, and agents. A project groups App IDs, components, policies, and managed services, and exposes its own HTTP and gRPC Dapr endpoints. Each project maps directly to a Kubernetes namespace, and by default allows communication between all applications and infrastructure resources inside it.
Deployment topologies
The hosting options place the Catalyst control plane, the Catalyst data plane (Dapr deployment plus Catalyst agent), and your applications in different trust and network boundaries. Use the diagrams below to compare where each component runs.
Catalyst Cloud
A shared, Diagrid-hosted control and data plane. Your applications connect over the public internet. Best for evaluation and small-to-medium development workloads.
Catalyst Enterprise: Dedicated
A dedicated, single-tenant control and data plane managed by Diagrid. The topology mirrors Catalyst Cloud, but the platform is isolated to one customer and sized for production workloads.
Catalyst Enterprise: Self-hosted
Diagrid manages the control plane; the data plane runs inside your infrastructure. Applications connect to the data plane over your private network, keeping application traffic and data local.
Catalyst Enterprise: Air-gapped
Both the control plane and the data plane run inside your infrastructure. No traffic leaves your network, which suits environments with strict regulatory or network isolation requirements.