CNDI

CNDI is a framework designed to simplify the self-hosting of open-source, distributed applications. It lets you deploy production-ready systems like Apache Airflow, PostgreSQL, Kafka, and WordPress on your own infrastructure, whether that's on major cloud providers (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure) or in a local development environment. The core idea is to give you the benefits of a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) – ease of setup – while maintaining full ownership, customization, and control over your stack.

The tool works by combining Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with GitOps principles. You select a pre-configured 'Template' for the application you want, and CNDI uses Terraform, Helm Charts, and ArgoCD to provision the underlying Kubernetes cluster and deploy the application. All infrastructure and configuration is defined as code and managed from a Git repository, making changes traceable and reversible. It includes a built-in observability suite with Prometheus, Loki, and Grafana for monitoring out of the box.

This approach is most beneficial for development and platform teams who want to avoid vendor lock-in, reduce recurring PaaS costs, and need deep customization for their workloads. It's practical for scenarios like spinning up a complete data orchestration platform, hosting a database cluster, or running a content management system where you own the entire deployment pipeline and can tailor it to specific performance or security requirements.