Architecture

An overview of the architecture for the DBNL platform

The DBNL platform architecture consists of a set of Services packaged as Docker images and a set of standard Infrastructure components that are deployed into your infrastructure (e.g. a VPC in AWS or GCP, or on-premise). The platform is scalable, modular, and self contained. It does not require an external connection to hosted Distributional services to operate.

DBNL platform architecture

Infrastructure

The DBNL platform requires the following infrastructure:

• A Kubernetes cluster to host the DBNL platform services.

• A PostgreSQL database to store metadata.

• An object store bucket to store raw data (e.g. S3 or GCS).

• A Redis database to serve as a messaging queue.

• A load balancer to route traffic to the API or UI service.

• (Optional) A Clickhouse database to store trace data.

Infrastructure Sizing Requirements

Kubernetes Cluster

Environment	Nodes	CPU per Node	Memory per Node	Total Resources
Minimum (POC/Testing)	3	4 vCPU	16 GB	12 vCPU, 48 GB RAM
Recommended (Production)	5+	8 vCPU	32 GB	40+ vCPU, 160+ GB RAM
High Volume (>100k logs/day)	10+	16 vCPU	64 GB	160+ vCPU, 640+ GB RAM

PostgreSQL Database

Environment	Instance Type (AWS)	Instance Type (GCP)	vCPU	Memory
Minimum	db.t3.medium	db-n1-standard-2	2	4 GB
Recommended	db.r5.large	db-n1-highmem-4	2-4	16 GB
High Volume	db.r5.xlarge+	db-n1-highmem-8+	4-8+	32+ GB

Object Store

Environment	Storage
Minimum	100 GB
Recommended	1 TB
High Volume	10+ TB (scales with log volume and retention)

Redis

Environment	Instance Type (AWS)	Instance Type (GCP)	Memory
Minimum	cache.t3.medium	M1	3.2 GB
Recommended	cache.r5.large	M3	13+ GB
High Volume	cache.r5.xlarge+	M4+	25+ GB

Clickhouse (Optional - Required for OTEL Trace Ingestion)

Environment	vCPU	Memory	Storage
Minimum	4	16 GB	100 GB
Recommended	8	32 GB	500 GB
High Volume	16+	64+ GB	2+ TB

Estimated Monthly Costs

Costs vary by cloud provider and region. Approximate ranges (as of 2025):

• Minimum Setup: $300-500/month (suitable for POC/testing)

• Recommended Production: $800-1500/month (handles typical production workloads)

• High Volume: $2000-5000+/month (depends on log volume and retention requirements)

These estimates assume standard cloud provider pricing. Costs can be reduced with reserved instances, committed use discounts, or on-premise deployments.

Services

The DBNL platform consists of three core services that run within the Kubernetes cluster:

• The API service (api-srv) serves the DBNL API and orchestrates work across the dbnl platform.

• The worker service (worker-srv) processes async jobs scheduled by the API service.

• The UI service (ui-srv) serves the DBNL UI assets.