Cloud engines

A cloud engine is a subnet you configure and operate yourself. Where the public Internet Computer is a shared platform, a cloud engine is a private slice of the same protocol — running the same software, capable of hosting the same canisters, but with its node set chosen by you.

This is the operator-facing capability: the “traditional cloud experience” mapped onto the Internet Computer.

What you choose

When you create a cloud engine, you pick:

• The nodes. Selected from a marketplace of node providers. Filter by jurisdiction, by hardware spec, by uptime history.
• Their geographies. Physical placement, for sovereignty / latency reasons.
• The provider mix. Diversify across providers so no single one can affect availability.
• Replication factor. The number of nodes that hold and execute each canister. More nodes → more fault tolerance.

What stays the same

Once a cloud engine is running, hosted apps see no difference from the public network. Canisters still work the same way. Chain-key cryptography still works the same way. Reverse gas still works the same way.

What changes is who runs the underlying hardware, and where it lives.

Where to spin one up

The cloud-engine wizard lives at opencloud.org↗ — that’s a sibling site, operated separately from this one, dedicated to the operator workflow.

Related

• Internet Computer Protocol — the underlying network.
• Chain-key cryptography — the engine that lets a subnet sign for itself.