Welcome to Customer-Managed Prefect¶

Customer-Managed Prefect brings the Prefect Cloud API into your own infrastructure — giving your team full workflow orchestration with no external connectivity required.

Deploy & Manage¶

Resources for administrators deploying and operating Customer-Managed Prefect.

• Infrastructure Requirements — Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, Redis sizing and version requirements
• Deployment Guide — Step-by-step installation via Helm
• Architecture Overview — Cloud architecture and service components
• Upgrade Guide — How to upgrade between releases
• Release Notes — Latest versions and patch history
• Monitoring — Health checks and observability
• FAQ — Common operational questions

Reference¶

• Authentication Methods — SSO configuration (Okta, Entra, ADFS)
• Database Flags — Recommended PostgreSQL configuration
• Secrets Configuration — Managing secrets in your deployment
• Feature Flags — Enabling and disabling features
• Security — Security posture and encryption details

Troubleshooting¶

• Troubleshooting Runbook — Diagnosing common issues and building a support bundle
• Rollback Guide — Rolling back to a previous release

Get Started as a Developer¶

This guide will help you set up your local environment and deploy your first workflow to your instance.

Prerequisites¶

Before you begin, ensure you have:

• An active account on your customer-managed Prefect instance
• Python 3.10 or newer installed

Step 1: Install Prefect¶

Install the Prefect package:

pip install prefect

Check the releases page to see which version of Prefect is supported with your instance. If you need to install a specific version:

pip install "prefect<3.7"

Replace 3.7 with the next minor version above what your instance supports.

Step 2: Create a Prefect Profile¶

Prefect profiles allow you to manage multiple configurations. Create a new profile for your instance:

prefect profile create profile-name

Replace profile-name with a descriptive name (for example, my-company or staging).

Step 3: Configure Your Instance URLs¶

Configure the profile with your instance's URLs:

prefect config set PREFECT_CLOUD_UI_URL=https://app.your-instance.example.com
prefect config set PREFECT_CLOUD_API_URL=https://api.your-instance.example.com

Your instance administrator can provide these URLs if you don't have them.

Step 4: Generate and Configure Your API Key¶

Navigate to your settings in the Prefect UI and generate an API key. Then authenticate:

prefect cloud login -k <API_KEY>

You'll see a confirmation message when authentication is successful.

Work Pools¶

Customer-Managed Prefect cannot use managed execution work pool options. Before deploying flows, ensure you have access to a work pool. If you don't have one configured, contact your instance administrator or see the Prefect docs on work pools.

Next: Create Your First Workflow¶

Follow the Prefect Quickstart guide to create and deploy your first workflow. Your flows will run on your customer-managed instance instead of Prefect Cloud, and you'll deploy to your organization's self-hosted work pool.

Common Tasks¶

• Deploy a workflow — See the deployment guide
• Schedule runs — Learn about scheduling workflows
• Monitor runs — View and manage workflows in the Prefect UI at your configured PREFECT_CLOUD_UI_URL
• Configure work pools — Set up self-hosted work pools for your infrastructure

Troubleshooting¶

• Verify your instance URLs are correct and accessible
• Ensure your API key is valid (regenerate it in your settings if needed)
• View your current configuration: prefect config view
• Confirm that a work pool is available and configured for your deployments

For more help, refer to the full Prefect documentation or contact your instance administrator.