> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://experience-digital-transform.gitbook.io/experience-digital-transformation/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://experience-digital-transform.gitbook.io/experience-digital-transformation/cloud-for-dpi/chapter-4/what-this-chapter-builds.md).

# What this chapter builds

Public-service and education platforms host services with different release cycles, exposure rules and capacity needs. Their Kubernetes foundation must separate lifecycle control from service traffic, isolate workload classes where necessary, and create or replace clusters without rebuilding each environment by hand.

The reference architecture in this chapter turns those requirements into a multi-cluster design on an **Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)** platform. A protected **Management cluster** controls cluster lifecycle. A separate **LoadBalancer cluster** provides the shared edge, while **workload clusters** provide isolated runtime boundaries for public services, education systems and, where required, GovStack Building Blocks. East-West and North-South traffic remain distinct from the private management path.

These architecture and lifecycle concepts apply to comparable IaaS platforms. The worked implementation uses OpenStack, so product names such as Nova, Neutron and Glance appear only where the platform is prepared or the result is validated.

The compact lab uses a single-control-plane seed. Production requires a highly available management plane, capacity, recovery, upgrades, monitoring and ownership. The method remains: Spec -> Run -> Validation. Repeat.

By the end, we can:

* explain the different roles of virtual machines and containers;
* identify Pods, Nodes, Deployments, Services, the scheduler and the control plane;
* distinguish kubeadm, vendor-managed cluster services and Cluster API;
* explain the management, LoadBalancer and workload-cluster roles in the reference architecture;
* distinguish protected management traffic, East-West service traffic and North-South service traffic;
* prepare the machine images and IaaS inputs required for repeatable cluster creation;
* follow a cluster declaration from Cluster API to IaaS resources and Kubernetes Nodes;
* distribute cert-manager, Contour/Envoy and a small local StorageClass to child clusters;
* prove the path from the edge cluster through a workload-cluster ingress to a Service and Pod;
* scale and delete through the declaration that owns the resources; and
* install and configure Argo CD to manage reviewed cluster declarations and workloads.


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