diff --git a/docs/evaluate/temporal-cloud/index.mdx b/docs/evaluate/temporal-cloud/index.mdx
deleted file mode 100644
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--- a/docs/evaluate/temporal-cloud/index.mdx
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,36 +0,0 @@
----
-id: index
-title: Introduction to Temporal Cloud
-sidebar_label: Introduction
-description: Discover Temporal Cloud with an overview of its Security, Service Availability, Defaults, Limits, Configurable Settings, SLA, Pricing, and Support. Learn more today!
-slug: /cloud/introduction
-toc_max_heading_level: 4
-keywords:
- - Introduction
- - Temporal Cloud
-tags:
- - Temporal Cloud
----
-
-In this introduction to Temporal Cloud you'll find the following information:
-
-- [Overview of Temporal Cloud](/cloud/overview)
-- [Security](/cloud/security)
-- [Service availability](/cloud/service-availability)
-- [Defaults, limits, and configurable settings](/cloud/limits)
-- [SLA](/cloud/sla)
-- [Pricing](/cloud/pricing)
-- [Support](/cloud/support)
-
-[Temporal Cloud](https://temporal.io/cloud) serves as a software as a service (SaaS) infrastructure platform, specifically designed to manage the durability of your Temporal Applications.
-
-Temporal Cloud offers developers a hassle-free way to leverage the power of Temporal without the operational overhead. Here's what you get:
-
-- Scalability: Start small and grow seamlessly. Handles anything from modest workloads to 100B+ actions/month.
-- Reliability: 99.99% uptime guarantee, with automatic updates and maintenance.
-- Security: Built-in encryption and compliance (SOC2, HIPAA), saving you time on security implementations.
-- Cost-effective: Often more economical than self-hosting, especially when factoring in operational costs.
-- Expertise on tap: Built and supported by Temporal's core team, ensuring you're always running an optimized setup.
-- Focus on development: Spend your time building Workflows, not managing infrastructure.
-
-**Importantly, it does not execute your code directly.** Users of Temporal Cloud must have their own environment to run Temporal Applications.
diff --git a/docs/evaluate/temporal-cloud/overview.mdx b/docs/evaluate/temporal-cloud/overview.mdx
index af7c08a06e..c26472b7c6 100644
--- a/docs/evaluate/temporal-cloud/overview.mdx
+++ b/docs/evaluate/temporal-cloud/overview.mdx
@@ -2,51 +2,204 @@
id: overview
title: Overview - Temporal Cloud
sidebar_label: Overview
-description: Temporal Cloud is a SaaS platform managing the durability of your Temporal Applications, implemented using Temporal SDK. It supervises workflow histories and supports multiple isolated namespaces.
+description: Temporal Cloud is a fully managed, globally distributed durable execution platform built on cell-based architecture. Available on AWS and GCP with consumption-based pricing and zero-downtime migration from self-hosted deployments.
slug: /cloud/overview
toc_max_heading_level: 4
keywords:
- - explanation
- - term
+ - temporal cloud
+ - managed service
+ - durable execution
+ - cell-based architecture
+ - multi-cloud
+ - high availability
tags:
- Temporal Cloud
---
import { CaptionedImage } from '@site/src/components';
-When it comes to running Temporal in production, you have two main options:
+Temporal Cloud is a fully managed durable execution platform.
+It handles the complexity of running Temporal at scale—persistence, replication, upgrades, and availability—so you can focus on building applications.
-**Temporal self-hosted:**
-This option involves setting up and managing your own instance of the Temporal Server.
-Your Workers and Temporal Application connect directly to this self-hosted instance.
-With the self-hosted approach, you have full control over the infrastructure and are responsible for managing the persistence layer, scalability, and availability of the Temporal system.
+Your code runs in your environment.
+Temporal Cloud never sees your application logic or sensitive data.
+The platform stores encrypted Workflow state and orchestrates execution, while your Workers execute business logic wherever you deploy them.
-**Temporal Cloud:**
-Temporal Cloud is a fully managed service provided by Temporal.
-It offers a hassle-free way to run your Temporal Applications without the need to manage the underlying infrastructure.
-Your Workers and Temporal Applications connect to the Temporal Cloud service, which takes care of the persistence layer, scalability, and availability for you.
+## How Temporal Cloud works
-Temporal Cloud and self-hosted Temporal Services have some similarities, as both require your Temporal Clients and Workers to establish a connection to the Temporal Service.
-Additionally, in both cases, you are responsible for managing and hosting your application code and running your Workers.
-The choice between self-hosted and Temporal Cloud depends on your specific requirements, resources, and expertise.
+
-### High level system topology of the Temporal Service
+Temporal Cloud operates as the control plane for your distributed applications:
-There are two major parts of the Temporal Service that work together to create the fully functioning system.
-Temporal Cloud is an offering of the Temporal Service.
+1. **Your environment**: You run Workers that execute your Workflow and Activity code. These can be deployed anywhere—Kubernetes, VMs, serverless, on-premises.
+2. **Temporal Cloud**: Manages Workflow state, Event History, task queuing, and scheduling. All data is encrypted in transit and at rest.
+3. **Temporal SDKs**: Your applications use the SDK to communicate with Temporal Cloud over secure gRPC connections.
-1. Temporal SDK: The Temporal software development kit (SDK) is available in various languages and can be integrated as a dependency into your new or existing application.
- It offers developers a comprehensive development framework and APIs, facilitating the creation and management of applications.
-2. Temporal Cloud: Operating independently from the execution environment, Temporal Cloud oversees the execution process by preserving the source of truth for your Workflow Execution Event Histories.
- This independent supervision ensures the durable execution of your distributed applications and services.
+This separation means Temporal Cloud scales independently of your application.
+You control compute resources for your Workers; Temporal handles the orchestration layer.
-
+## Architecture
+
+### Cell-based infrastructure
+
+Temporal Cloud uses a cell-based architecture to achieve isolation and scalability.
+Each cell is a self-contained deployment unit with its own:
+
+- Dedicated cloud account and VPC
+- Kubernetes cluster running Temporal services
+- Primary database with synchronous replication across three availability zones
+- Elasticsearch for Workflow visibility and search
+- Load balancers and ingress management
+- Observability and certificate infrastructure
+
+Cells act as failure domains.
+If infrastructure within a cell experiences issues, only Namespaces in that cell are affected.
+This design limits blast radius and enables independent scaling.
+
+### Data plane and control plane
+
+**Data plane**: Where your Workflows execute. Each cell processes Workflow operations, persists state, and manages task queues. The data plane is optimized for low latency and high throughput.
+
+**Control plane**: Manages provisioning, configuration, and lifecycle operations. When you create a Namespace, the control plane:
+1. Selects an appropriate cell in your chosen region
+2. Provisions database resources and roles
+3. Generates and deploys mTLS certificates
+4. Configures ingress routes and validates connectivity
+
+The control plane uses Temporal itself (durable execution) to orchestrate these operations reliably.
+
+### Multi-cloud availability
+
+Temporal Cloud runs on both AWS and GCP:
+
+- **14 AWS regions** spanning North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and South America
+- **5 GCP regions** in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific
+
+You can create Namespaces in any supported region.
+For disaster recovery, you can replicate across regions within a cloud provider or across cloud providers entirely.
+
+See [Service regions](/cloud/regions) for the complete list of available regions.
+
+## Built-in reliability
+
+Every Temporal Cloud Namespace includes baseline high availability:
+
+- **Three-zone replication**: Workflow state synchronously replicates across three availability zones before acknowledging writes
+- **Automatic failover**: If one zone becomes unavailable, operations continue on the remaining zones
+- **99.9% SLA**: Contractual uptime guarantee for standard Namespaces
+
+### High Availability features
+
+For workloads requiring stronger guarantees, Temporal Cloud offers three replication options:
+
+| Deployment | Description | Use case |
+|------------|-------------|----------|
+| **Same-region** | Replicate across isolated cells within one region | Single-region applications needing cell-level isolation |
+| **Multi-region** | Replicate across regions within one cloud provider | Geographic redundancy and compliance requirements |
+| **Multi-cloud** | Replicate across cloud providers (AWS ↔ GCP) | Maximum resilience against provider-level outages |
+
+High Availability Namespaces include:
+- **99.99% SLA**: Four-nines contractual uptime guarantee
+- **Sub-1-minute RPO**: Recovery Point Objective for data loss
+- **20-minute RTO**: Recovery Time Objective for failover completion
+- **Automatic or manual failover**: Choose your preferred failover strategy
+
+See [High Availability](/cloud/high-availability) for configuration details.
+
+## Security model
+
+Temporal Cloud implements defense-in-depth security:
+
+### Your code stays with you
+
+Temporal Cloud never executes your application code.
+Workers run in your environment, connecting to Temporal Cloud over encrypted channels.
+You control access to your compute resources and secrets.
+
+### Client-side encryption
+
+The [Data Converter](/dataconversion) lets you encrypt payloads before they leave your Workers.
+Temporal Cloud stores ciphertext—if the service were compromised, your data remains encrypted.
+Deploy a [Codec Server](/production-deployment/data-encryption) to decrypt data in the Web UI without sharing keys.
+
+### Network isolation
+
+- **mTLS authentication**: Per-Namespace certificate-based authentication for gRPC endpoints
+- **API key authentication**: Alternative to certificates for simpler key management
+- **Private connectivity**: AWS PrivateLink and GCP Private Service Connect for traffic that never traverses the public internet
+
+### Compliance
+
+Temporal Technologies maintains SOC 2 Type 2 certification and complies with GDPR and HIPAA regulations.
+Audit logs capture all API operations and can be exported to your security monitoring systems.
+
+See [Security model](/cloud/security) for complete details.
+
+## Consumption-based pricing
+
+Temporal Cloud charges based on what you use:
+
+### Actions
+
+The primary billing unit.
+Actions are billable operations like starting Workflows, sending Signals, recording Heartbeats, and completing Activities.
+Pricing starts at $50 per million Actions with volume discounts as you scale.
+
+### Storage
+
+- **Active Storage**: Event History for running Workflows
+- **Retained Storage**: Event History for completed Workflows (configurable retention period up to 90 days)
+
+### Plans
+
+Four tiers—Essentials, Business, Enterprise, and Mission Critical—with increasing support levels, included Actions/Storage, and features like SAML and SCIM.
+The Essentials plan starts at $100/month.
+
+Self-serve signup and plan management available at [cloud.temporal.io](https://cloud.temporal.io).
+
+See [Pricing](/cloud/pricing) for detailed rates and examples.
+
+## Portability
+
+Temporal Cloud runs the same Temporal Server as the open-source distribution.
+This means:
+
+### Zero code changes
+
+Applications built for self-hosted Temporal work on Temporal Cloud without modification.
+Update your connection configuration to point at your Cloud Namespace—that's it.
+
+### Zero-downtime migration
+
+[Automated migration](/cloud/migrate/automated) uses Workflow replication to move running Workflows from self-hosted to Cloud (or between Cloud regions) without interruption.
+No Workflow restarts, no data loss, no downtime.
+
+[Manual migration](/cloud/migrate/manual) works by updating Clients and Workers to use new Namespace endpoints while existing Workflows complete naturally.
+
+### Bidirectional
+
+Move workloads from self-hosted to Cloud, Cloud to self-hosted, or between Cloud regions and providers.
+The same migration tooling works in any direction.
+
+## Self-serve operations
+
+Temporal Cloud is designed for self-service:
+
+- **Web UI**: Create Namespaces, manage users, configure settings at [cloud.temporal.io](https://cloud.temporal.io)
+- **CLI (`tcld`)**: Automate operations from the command line
+- **Terraform provider**: Infrastructure-as-code for Namespaces, users, and configuration
+- **Cloud Ops API**: Programmatic access for custom tooling and automation
+
+No support tickets required for standard operations.
+
+## Getting started
-Temporal Cloud is based off of the open source [Temporal Server](/temporal-service/temporal-server) software and offers a comparable set of features but with out the overhead of setting up and deploying a production level Temporal Service (Temporal Server + all of the auxillary services it depends on).
+1. [Sign up for Temporal Cloud](https://temporal.io/get-cloud)
+2. [Create your first Namespace](/cloud/namespaces)
+3. [Connect your Workers](/cloud/get-started#set-up-your-clients-and-workers)
+4. [Run your first Workflow](/cloud/get-started#run-your-first-workflow)
-Temporal Cloud is offered in units of isolation known as [Namespaces](/namespaces).
-You can provision and use one or more Cloud Namespaces.
-A typical use case is to use separate Namespaces as development, testing, integration, staging, and production environments for an application.
+For existing Temporal users, see [Migration](/cloud/migrate) to move self-hosted workloads to Cloud.
diff --git a/docs/production-deployment/cloud/index.mdx b/docs/production-deployment/cloud/index.mdx
index 66b5b82f5e..66d5e163d0 100644
--- a/docs/production-deployment/cloud/index.mdx
+++ b/docs/production-deployment/cloud/index.mdx
@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ To create a Temporal Cloud account, sign up [here](https://temporal.io/get-cloud
## Become familiar with Temporal Cloud
-- [Introduction to Temporal Cloud](/cloud/introduction)
+- [Overview of Temporal Cloud](/cloud/overview)
- [Security model](/cloud/security)
- [Service availability](/cloud/service-availability) (availability, region support, throughput, latency, and limits)
- [Account, Namespace, and application level configurations](/cloud/limits)
diff --git a/docs/production-deployment/self-hosted-guide/monitoring.mdx b/docs/production-deployment/self-hosted-guide/monitoring.mdx
index ff95d3f30f..cb1e4b978f 100644
--- a/docs/production-deployment/self-hosted-guide/monitoring.mdx
+++ b/docs/production-deployment/self-hosted-guide/monitoring.mdx
@@ -219,4 +219,4 @@ If you are installing and running Temporal via [Helm chart](https://github.com/t
Datadog has a Temporal integration for collecting Temporal Service metrics.
Once you've [configured Prometheus](#prometheus), you can configure the [Datadog Agent](https://docs.datadoghq.com/integrations/temporal/).
-If you are using [Temporal Cloud](/cloud/introduction), you can also [integrate Datadog directly](https://docs.datadoghq.com/integrations/temporal-cloud/), without needing to use Prometheus.
+If you are using [Temporal Cloud](/cloud/overview), you can also [integrate Datadog directly](https://docs.datadoghq.com/integrations/temporal-cloud/), without needing to use Prometheus.
diff --git a/sidebars.js b/sidebars.js
index 8e3fe05780..dac67dc06e 100644
--- a/sidebars.js
+++ b/sidebars.js
@@ -60,10 +60,9 @@ module.exports = {
collapsed: true,
link: {
type: 'doc',
- id: 'evaluate/temporal-cloud/index',
+ id: 'evaluate/temporal-cloud/overview',
},
items: [
- 'evaluate/temporal-cloud/overview',
'evaluate/temporal-cloud/security',
'evaluate/temporal-cloud/service-availability',
'evaluate/temporal-cloud/regions',
diff --git a/static/img/cloud/cloud-overview.png b/static/img/cloud/cloud-overview.png
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--- a/vercel.json
+++ b/vercel.json
@@ -5,6 +5,11 @@
"silent": true
},
"redirects": [
+ {
+ "source": "/cloud/introduction",
+ "destination": "/cloud/overview",
+ "permanent": true
+ },
{
"source": "/cookbook/:path*",
"destination": "/ai-cookbook/:path*",