Skip to main content

High Level Architecture

Low-Ops is made up of a set of components that work together to provide a platform for running applications.

Low-Ops Layers​

There are three main layers in Low-Ops architecture:

  • Applications - Custom-built applications that run on Low-Ops.
  • Platform - The platform that runs the applications. It also provides a diverse set of services that are used by the applications or enables developers to build, deliver, and own their applications end-to-end.
  • Foundation - The foundation that the platform runs on. This is the cloud provider or on-premise datacenter that provides a cloud-agnostic foundation which must be a Kubernetes cluster.
Low-Ops Layered Architecture

Philosophy​

Deploying components onto Kubernetes is not rocket science. However, having the platform to be reproducible, scalable, and maintainable is a challenge. Low-Ops is designed to be easy to use and requires minimal maintenance. It is designed to be used by developers and operators with minimal knowledge of Kubernetes and cloud infrastructure. You will be able to do all your tasks through the Low-Ops Portal supported with best practices of delivering applications to your business and customers.

Because the whole platform is fully automated and runs on your infrastructure, you have 100% control over your data and can be sure that it is secure. You can also easily integrate it with your existing systems and processes.

Don't want or need upgradability of Low-Ops? You can modify it to fit your needs. You can also use it as a starting point for your own platform.

LowOps is a modular, Kubernetes-based application platform that enables teams to deploy and manage a wide variety of applications - including low-code Mendix apps and Generic Docker-based workloads - in a secure, observable, and scalable way. It is designed to work across multiple environments: single VM, cloud (AWS, Azure), and on-premises Kubernetes clusters.

Low-Ops Layered Services Architecture

Core Components​

Core Layer​

  • Ingress: nginx ingress controller
  • Certificates: cert-manager with Let's Encrypt for automatic TLS

DevOps Toolchain​

  • Git: Gitea for Git-based source control
  • Registry: Harbor with OCI scanning and MinIO backend
  • CI/CD: Tekton pipelines for building, testing, deploying
  • Auth: Keycloak as IdP + OAUTH-proxy for SSO-enabled services

Platform Portal​

  • LowOps portal: Web UI for developers and operators
  • LowOps workers: Background automation tasks triggered via UI or events

Event-Driven Core​

  • RabbitMQ: Event transport for platform events, deployments, monitoring

Data Layer​

  • S3 storage: MinIO in S3 Gateway mode (Azure Blob / AWS S3 backends)
  • Databases: CNPG clusters (CloudNativePG) for apps and internal services
  • Backups: Kanister for Kubernetes-native backups
  • Secrets & config: Vault for secret management, Consul for service discovery
  • pgAdmin: DB UI for internal or debug usage

Monitoring & Observability​

  • Metrics: Prometheus-stack + Thanos for HA + long-term metrics
  • Logs: Loki-stack for log aggregation
  • Dashboards: Grafana with prebuilt and custom dashboards

Developer Experience​

Interaction point: All developers use the LowOps portal (SSO protected) to:

  • Create applications
  • Monitor deployments
  • Access logs, metrics, backups
  • Trigger builds and promotions

Supported app types:

  • Generic: Any app using a Dockerfile (e.g., Django, Go, Node.js)
  • Mendix: Fully supported, with deployment automation and CI/CD integration
  • Next.js: Treated as a dedicated framework due to frontend-specific workflows

Multi-Tenancy & Isolation

  • Namespace per app environment: Each application has isolated namespaces for each environment
  • Access control: Managed via Keycloak SSO + Kubernetes RBAC
  • Registry and S3 storage: Support project-based access segregation (Harbor projects, S3 buckets)