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A provider is the infrastructure your nodes run on. When you request nodes, you choose a provider, and it supplies the machines. Different providers offer different kinds of machines and different settings (such as how much CPU and memory you can choose).

Choosing a provider

You pick a provider in the Where to run step of the request wizard (see Pools). Each provider is listed by its title and name. When you select one, the wizard shows the settings that provider offers — for example CPU, memory, and operating system — so you can describe the machine you want.

Managed providers versus self-hosted

Providers fall into two broad groups, and the difference changes how you add and remove nodes.

Managed providers

With a managed provider, ORC8R creates and destroys the machines for you. You simply set how many nodes you want (the pool size), and ORC8R keeps the pool at that number, adding or removing machines as needed. See Pools for how to scale.

Self-hosted

A self-hosted provider lets you connect machines you already own — your own servers or computers. Instead of ORC8R creating the machines, you install the ORC8R agent on each machine, and it joins the pool itself.

To add a self-hosted machine:

  1. Open the self-hosted pool and click Connect.
  2. Copy the one-time install command shown (there is one for Linux or macOS, and one for Windows).
  3. Run it on the machine you want to add.

The machine installs the agent, registers itself using a one-time token in the command, and appears in the pool. Because you add machines yourself, self-hosted pools do not have a size you set; they grow as you connect more machines. In the UI, self-hosted pools are labelled Self-hosted.

The project's Resource Providers page

Open a project and go to Resource Providers to see which providers the project can use. This page is a read-only list; you do not add providers here. Providers are set up for you by whoever administers your ORC8R deployment.

For each provider the page shows its name, its network mode, and its visibility — which decides who can use it:

  • Project — only this project.
  • Organization — all projects in this organization.
  • Global — all organizations.

If you have the right permissions you can change a provider's visibility from this page; otherwise it is shown for information only.

  • Pools — request and scale nodes on a provider.
  • Nodes — the machines a provider supplies, and how to connect self-hosted ones.