Deployment and Lock-In

A major difference between telemetry fleet-management options is whether the control plane can be deployed only as hosted software as a service (SaaS), or also as self-hosted infrastructure.

Fleet Manager supports both hosted and self-hosted deployment models.

Why This Matters

Deployment model choice affects:

Data residency and regulatory posture.
Network and security boundary design.
Procurement and long-term platform flexibility.
Exit cost if priorities change.

Hosted-Only vs Hosted-and-Self-Hosted

Hosted-Only Pattern

Typical strengths:

Fast initial setup.
Lower day-one platform effort.

Typical constraints:

Harder alignment with strict residency or internal hosting requirements.
Higher migration effort if hosting policy changes later.

Hosted-and-Self-Hosted Pattern (Fleet Manager)

Typical strengths:

Choose deployment based on policy and environment constraints.
Keep one operating model while changing where it runs.
Reduce vendor lock-in by preserving deployment flexibility.

Practical Anti-Lock-In Benefits

Fleet Manager helps reduce lock-in risk by supporting:

Agent channel flexibility: upstream Fluent Bit OSS and Telemetry Forge Agent.
Control-plane flexibility: hosted or self-hosted.
Workflow portability: consistent grouping, revision, and rollout practices.

In practice, this means teams can change packaging, support level, or hosting placement without redesigning the whole fleet operations model.

Decision Checklist

Use this checklist when selecting your Fleet Manager deployment model:

Do you have residency or sovereignty controls requiring self-hosted operation?
Do you need one model across cloud, on-premise, and edge estates?
Do you want to keep optionality between OSS and commercial agent channels?
Do you need a migration path that avoids operational redesign?

If most answers are yes, use Fleet Manager with a portability-first approach: keep rollout practices and configuration structure consistent across both hosted and self-hosted environments.