Syself Autopilot leverages the Cluster API (CAPI) to provide a clear separation between control and compute. When using Syself Autopilot, you interact with a management cluster (also called Autopilot or Syself Autopilot) that handles the orchestration of your workload clusters: the Kubernetes clusters that run your actual applications.
In this documentation, we also refer to the management cluster as the "Autopilot" or "Syself Autopilot" cluster.
The management cluster is hosted and maintained by Syself. It's where the platform components lives. It includes the Cluster API Provider Hetzner, the Cluster Stack Operator, and many other components that are responsible for managing the lifecycle of workload clusters.
You never have to worry about running or updating this management cluster — it’s fully managed by us. It acts as the interface between you and your infrastructure.
Workload clusters are the Kubernetes clusters that actually run your applications, services, and workloads. These clusters are created on your Hetzner infrastructure through the management cluster. Each workload cluster is isolated and provisioned with its own control plane and worker nodes.
Because they’re separate from the management plane, workload clusters are more resilient and can be independently updated, scaled, or destroyed without affecting others.
This separation allows Syself Autopilot to provide a higher level of automation, flexibility, and reliability: