# Swiss sovereignty, by design

Managed Kubernetes runs on Swiss sovereign infrastructure from the first iteration. Your workloads and the cluster control plane stay in Switzerland, under Swiss law, with no dependency on a US or other foreign hyperscaler. Sovereignty here is a property of the platform, not an add-on.

## Where it runs: cloudscale.ch

The first iteration runs on [cloudscale.ch](https://www.cloudscale.ch/), an independent Swiss cloud provider that operates its data centers exclusively in Switzerland. That matters for three reasons:

- **Data location.** Your cluster data and persistent storage stay physically in Switzerland.
- **Governing law.** cloudscale.ch is a Swiss company operating under Swiss law. There is no foreign operator in the chain and no exposure to extraterritorial legislation such as the US CLOUD Act.
- **No hyperscaler dependency.** The platform does not lean on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud primitives. You are not tied to a hyperscaler's networking, IAM, or storage model.

Additional Swiss sovereign providers may follow, driven by demand from early-access participants. The platform is built to be portable across Swiss infrastructure rather than locked to one provider's proprietary services.

## What makes the stack sovereign

Sovereignty is not only about where the servers are. It is also about what runs on them and who controls it.

### Immutable OS on Talos Linux

The platform runs on [Talos Linux](https://www.talos.dev/), an immutable, API-managed Kubernetes operating system. There is no SSH and no shell on the nodes; the entire system is configured through a declarative API. That eliminates configuration drift and shrinks the attack surface, and it means the OS layer is fully reproducible and auditable rather than hand-maintained.

### Open source, end to end

Every layer of the platform is open source: Talos, Cluster API, Cilium, the Gateway API, and Rook with Ceph. There is no proprietary enterprise licensing in the orchestration stack. Open source is a sovereignty property in its own right: you are not dependent on a single vendor's roadmap, licensing terms, or ability to continue supporting the product.

### Operated by a Swiss company

VSHN is a Swiss company based in Zurich, operating Kubernetes in production since 2016. The platform lifecycle is run by a Swiss operator under Swiss employment and data protection law.

## What sovereignty does and does not mean here

Managed Kubernetes is a deliberately bounded, business-hours service. It gives you Swiss data residency, Swiss governing law, and an open-source stack on independent Swiss infrastructure. It is not a regulated-grade enterprise platform with continuous around-the-clock operations. If your workloads require that, [Managed OpenShift](https://www.managed-openshift.ch) is the better fit. Being honest about that boundary is itself part of a trustworthy sovereignty story.

## Next steps

Sovereignty is one of the main reasons teams move to Swiss-operated Kubernetes. If keeping your clusters under Swiss law matters to you, [register your interest](#contact) and tell us about your requirements.