# Provisioning a Cluster

The ZSoftly team provisions your ZSoftly Cloud Storage cluster to your requirements. This page explains what we need from you and what you receive.

## Sizing inputs

To size your cluster, we work with you on:

- Usable capacity. Your target usable storage, after replication or erasure coding.
- Data protection. Replication (for example 3x) or erasure coding for capacity efficiency, per pool.
- Performance profile. Throughput and latency targets, plus any NVMe [fast tier or cache layer](https://docs.zcp.zsoftly.ca/cloud-storage/reference/performance-tiering).
- Interfaces. Which of object (S3), block (RBD), and file (CephFS) you need.
- Delivery model. [Hosted](https://docs.zcp.zsoftly.ca/cloud-storage/overview#two-delivery-models) in a ZSoftly region, or on-premises on your hardware.
- Ceph version. A recent stable release by default, or a [specific version](https://docs.zcp.zsoftly.ca/cloud-storage/reference/ceph-versions) you select with our team.

## What you receive

When your cluster is ready, ZSoftly provides a credentials document with:

- Root and administrative access to the cluster
- Ceph Dashboard URL and login
- S3 endpoint URL plus an initial access key and secret, for object storage
- The Ceph version deployed

See [Accessing Your Cluster](https://docs.zcp.zsoftly.ca/cloud-storage/getting-started/accessing-your-cluster) for how to use each of these.

Your credentials document is the source of truth for endpoints, versions, and access details specific to your cluster.

## Scaling later

Clusters scale horizontally. You add capacity or performance by expanding the cluster with more nodes or devices. Contact ZSoftly to plan an expansion.

## Get started

→ [Contact ZSoftly](https://zcp.zsoftly.ca/contact?source=docs&topic=cloud-storage) to provision or expand a cluster.