Which build infrastructure is right for me?

You can run builds on Harness-hosted machines or your own infrastructure.

Harness Cloud (Harness-hosted option)

With Harness Cloud you can run builds in isolation on Harness-hosted machines. You can run builds at scale on Linux, Windows, and macOS machines that are preinstalled with software commonly used in CI pipelines.

Harness hosts, maintains, and upgrades these machines so that you can focus on building great software instead of maintaining build infrastructure.

Harness Cloud is available with all CI plans. To use Harness Cloud, go to Get started with Harness Cloud.

Self-hosted options

Self-hosted build infrastructure can be local or in a Kubernetes cluster.

Local

With the local runner, which is also known as the Docker runner, you can run builds on a local machine. You can execute build steps in Docker containers or directly on the host machine.

Self-hosted local build infrastructure is available with all CI plans. To learn more, go to Define a local build infrastructure.

Kubernetes cluster

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This option is available only with paid CI plans.

Executing builds in a Kubernetes cluster is useful when you want to run ephemeral builds at scale in your own infrastructure.

When running builds in a Kubernetes cluster, each CI stage executes in a pod, and the stage's steps share the pod's resources.

To learn more about using a Kubernetes cluster as build infrastructure, go to Define a Kubernetes cluster build infrastructure.

Compatibility matrix

The following table shows which operating systems and architectures that each build infrastructure option supports.

Operating system	Architecture	Harness Cloud	Self-hosted local	Self-hosted Kubernetes cluster
Linux	amd64	✅ Supported	✅ Supported	✅ Supported
Linux	arm64	✅ Supported	✅ Supported	✅ Supported
macOS	arm64	✅ Supported	✅ Supported	❌ Not supported
Windows	amd64	🟡 Coming soon	✅ Supported	✅ Supported
Windows	arm64	❌ Not supported	❌ Not supported	❌ Not supported