Workspace providers are logical groups of resources to which developers can deploy workspaces. They enable a single Coder deployment to provision and manage workspaces across multiple Kubernetes clusters and namespaces, including those located in other geographies, regions, or clouds.

Distributed teams can use this feature to allow users to manage workspaces in the nearest cluster. When combined with satellites, developers will see an improved experience and reduced network latency.

You can also use workspace providers to support data sovereignty requirements or increase the isolation between workspaces running in the same region or cluster.

Built-in workspace provider

By default, all Coder deployments will have a built-in workspace provider that specifies the Kubernetes cluster containing the Coder deployment. This allows users to create workspaces in the same cluster as the Coder deployment with no additional configuration.

You cannot delete the built-in workspace provider.

Remote workspace providers

You can deploy a workspace provider to any existing Kubernetes cluster, enabling the cluster to become a selectable pool of resources in which developers can create workspaces.

Remote workspace providers can lower developers' latency by locating their workspaces closer to them geographically or can be used for workload isolation purposes. See Deploying a workspace provider to learn how to expand your Coder deployment to additional Kubernetes clusters.

Organization allowlists

Site admins and site managers can manage which organizations have permissions to provision new workspaces in each workspace provider. When a new organization is created, it can provision workspaces into the built-in workspace provider by default.