At VAST Forward 2026, VAST Data announced Polaris, a global control plane designed to provision, operate and orchestrate distributed AI infrastructure across public cloud, neocloud and on-premises datacentre environments. Polaris transforms VAST deployments into a unified, fleet-scale platform, enabling enterprises to manage AI data and infrastructure wherever training and inference workloads run.
As AI pipelines expand across regions and providers, infrastructure is no longer a single-cluster problem. Training may occur in one geography, inference in another, and data collection at the edge, all under strict governance and cost constraints. Polaris introduces a centralised service delivery layer that automates deployment, lifecycle management and multi-cluster orchestration, converting distributed infrastructure into a single operational platform rather than a collection of environments.
Included at no extra cost, Polaris complements the VAST AI Operating System by coordinating how VAST environments are deployed and operated across infrastructure boundaries. The VAST DataSpace unifies data across clusters through a global namespace and distributed fabric, while Polaris governs how those clusters are deployed and lifecycle-managed across cloud and hybrid environments. Together, DataSpace abstracts data location and Polaris abstracts infrastructure location, allowing applications and agents to operate against a single logical environment regardless of where compute or data resides.
“AI infrastructure has outgrown the idea of a single deployment in a single location,” said Jonsi Stefansson, General Manager, Cloud Solutions, VAST Data. “Polaris establishes a global control plane that makes distributed AI infrastructure operationally coherent. It allows enterprises to deploy, scale and govern VAST clusters on any cloud or on-premises, all while managing them as one system.”
A global control plane for the AI era
Built as a secure, multi-tenant Kubernetes-based control plane with a lightweight agent on every VAST node, Polaris automates provisioning in customer accounts, integrates with cloud marketplaces for subscription and entitlement, and centrally orchestrates upgrades, expansion and node replacement. The platform includes enterprise identity integration, role-based access control and audit logging, delivering cloud-style operational consistency for AI infrastructure that spans hybrid and multicloud environments. Additionally, Polaris can be VAST-managed, partner-managed, or customer-managed and supports cloud service provider partners, as well as sovereign deployments. Designed to scale from the largest cloud providers to global neoclouds, VAST Polaris supports multi-site, multi-cluster deployments under centralised management.
Polaris operates as an intent-driven management layer: administrators define the desired state of infrastructure, and Polaris coordinates both cloud-native services and VAST software to reach and maintain that state. Deployments can be created, expanded and governed through a single API and interface, ensuring consistent configuration, policy enforcement and operational behavior across regions and providers.
By combining global data services with fleet-scale orchestration, the VAST AI Operating System enables AI pipelines to move from isolated deployments to continuously operating systems. Organisations can align compute placement with GPU availability, cost and compliance requirements without changing application behavior or operational models.
Polaris is available as part of VAST cloud deployments, with expanded multi-cluster orchestration capabilities planned in future releases.
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