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Version: User Guides (Cloud)

Environment Isolation

Proper environment isolation and access control are essential in enterprise application development and deployment. Zilliz Cloud offers flexible isolation through a hierarchical structure of Organizations, Projects, and Clusters. This guide helps you select the most appropriate strategy based on your operational, security, and financial requirements.

Organization-level isolation​

Organization-level isolation is the most secure option.

Best suited for:

  • Separate billing accounts (e.g., multiple different AWS subscription accounts)

  • Independent invoice and cost management

  • Strict user access boundaries across environments

How to implement:

  • Create a distinct organization for each environment (e.g., production, development, testing)

  • Each organization can be linked to a unique payment method

  • By default, only one single organization is supported by Zilliz Cloud. If you need multiple organization, please submit a request in the Support Portal.

Project-level isolation​

This option is recommended for most enterprise-grade production deployments where billing separation is not a requirement.

Best suited for:

  • Shared billing across environments under a single payment method

  • Tracking resource usage by environment

  • Managing user roles with moderate isolation

Benefits:

  • Fine-grained user access control at the project level

  • Consolidated billing with per-environment usage tracking

  • Sufficient isolation for most enterprise use cases

Cluster-level isolation​

This is the most agile and lightweight option.

Best suited for:

  • Small teams focused on rapid iteration

  • Minimal access control needs

  • Basic workload separation

Features:

  • Multiple clusters under the same project

  • Each cluster has dedicated compute/storage resources for workload isolation

  • Centralized monitoring for easier operation and management

Choosing the right isolation strategy​

Use the following flow to guide your decision:

  1. Do you need separate billing or invoices? → Yes: Use Organization-level isolation

  2. Do you need role-based access control per environment? → Yes: Use Project-level isolation

  3. Neither of the above? → Use Cluster-level isolation for simplicity

For tailored recommendations, please contact the Zilliz Cloud Support Team.