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AWS deployment guidelines

Self-managed Materialize requires: a Kubernetes (v1.31+) cluster; PostgreSQL as a metadata database; blob storage; and a license key.

As a general guideline, we recommend:

  • ARM-based CPU
  • A 1:8 ratio of vCPU to GiB memory.
  • A 8:1 ratio of GiB local instance storage to GiB memory when using swap.

When operating in AWS, we recommend the following instances:

EC2 Instances
r8g, r7g, and r6g families when running without local disk.
r7gd and r6gd families (and r8gd once available) when running with local disk. Recommended for production.

Starting in v0.3.1, the Materialize on AWS Terraform uses ["r7gd.2xlarge"] as the default node_group_instance_types.

Locally-attached NVMe storage

Configuring swap on nodes to use locally-attached NVMe storage allows Materialize to spill to disk when operating on datasets larger than main memory. This setup can provide significant cost savings and provides a more graceful degradation rather than OOMing. Network-attached storage (like EBS volumes) can significantly degrade performance and is not supported.

Swap support

    New Unified Terraform

    The unified Materialize Terraform module supports configuring swap out of the box.

    Legacy Terraform

    The Legacy Terraform provider adds preliminary swap support in v0.6.1, via the swap_enabled variable. With this change, the Terraform:

    • Creates a node group for Materialize.
    • Configures NVMe instance store volumes as swap using a daemonset.
    • Enables swap at the Kubelet.

    See Upgrade Notes.

    NOTE: If deploying v25.2, Materialize clusters will not automatically use swap unless they are configured with a memory_request less than their memory_limit. In v26, this will be handled automatically.

    TLS

    When running with TLS in production, run with certificates from an official Certificate Authority (CA) rather than self-signed certificates.

    Upgrading guideline

    Whe upgrading:

    • Always check the version specific upgrade notes.

    • Always upgrade the operator first and ensure version compatibility between the operator and the Materialize instance you are upgrading to.

    • Always upgrade your Materialize instances after upgrading the operator to ensure compatibility.

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