# Introduction

ZCP (ZSoftly Cloud Platform) is a cloud infrastructure platform that lets you provision and manage virtual machines, private networks, block storage, object storage, and Kubernetes clusters from a single portal.

Throughout these docs:

- ZCP: ZSoftly Cloud Platform (this product, the public cloud portal)
- ZPCP: ZSoftly Private Cloud Platform (the on-premises / dedicated private cloud product)
- ZCP CLI: the `zcp` command-line tool for managing ZCP resources

## Capabilities

- Compute: Launch VMs with shared CPU, dedicated CPU, high-frequency, or GPU configurations
- Networking: Create public networks or fully isolated VPCs with subnets, ACLs, and VPN gateways
- Block Storage: Attach local NVMe SSD, local SATA SSD, or replicated shared-storage volumes to your VMs for additional persistent storage
- Object Storage: S3-compatible object storage
- Kubernetes: Managed Kubernetes clusters with HA and autoscaling support
- Load Balancer: Distribute traffic across VM instances with session persistence options
- DNS: Manage domains and DNS records from the portal

## Access methods

| Method | Use case |
| --- | --- |
| Portal | Web UI at [cloud.zcp.zsoftly.ca](https://cloud.zcp.zsoftly.ca/) |
| CLI | [`zcp`](https://docs.zcp.zsoftly.ca/public-cloud/cli/installation): scriptable, cross-platform CLI tool |
| API | REST API: [Cloud Platform](https://api.zcp.zsoftly.ca/api/docs/nimbo) · [Object Storage](https://api.zcp.zsoftly.ca/api/docs/ceph) |

## Get started

1. [Create your account](https://docs.zcp.zsoftly.ca/public-cloud/getting-started/account-signup): sign up, verify email, set up billing
2. [Set up your profile](https://docs.zcp.zsoftly.ca/public-cloud/getting-started/profile-setup): personal info, 2FA, user roles
3. [Quickstart](https://docs.zcp.zsoftly.ca/public-cloud/getting-started/quickstart): deploy your first VM, connect via SSH, and submit a block storage volume creation and attachment request