> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://clumio.reclear.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Control planes and data planes

> How the service you configure is separated from the regions that hold your data, and what that means for coverage and residency.

Clumio is a hosted service, and it is split in two. The part you log into and configure is the
**control plane**. The regions where your resources are actually protected, and where their backups
are stored, are the **data plane**.

```mermaid theme={null}
flowchart LR
  YOU["Your team"] --> CP["Control plane<br/>portal, API, configuration"]
  CP --> DP["Data-plane regions<br/>where resources are protected"]
  DP --> VAULT["Backup vault<br/>separate Clumio-managed account"]
```

## The control plane

Each Clumio tenant belongs to one control plane. It hosts your portal, your configuration, and the
API endpoint your clients call. A token is issued *by* a control plane and is only valid against
that control plane's API base URL — which is why the hostname is part of every client's
configuration rather than an afterthought.

Control planes are regional in their own right. Clumio operates US West, US East (existing
customers), Europe, Canada, Australia and Japan, plus a FedRAMP Moderate control plane.

## The data plane

A control plane maps to a defined set of data-plane regions: the AWS regions and Google Cloud
locations where it can protect resources. The sets differ between control planes, and they are not
a superset of each other — a region available under one control plane may not be available under
another.

Some AWS regions are *opt-in*: they are not enabled by default in your AWS account, and must be
enabled on each connected account before they can be used, including as an out-of-region backup
destination.

## Residency

By default, a backup stays in the same region as the resource it came from. Cross-region storage is
an opt-in, policy-level choice on supported workloads rather than the default, and it carries the
relevant cloud data-transfer cost.

Restore geography follows the same logic: cross-region restore moves data between regions *within*
the same cloud provider. Cross-cloud restore — AWS to Google Cloud, or the reverse — is not
supported and is not planned.

## Choosing a control plane

Three things decide it, in this order:

1. **Coverage.** The control plane must support the regions that contain the resources you want to
   protect. This is the hard constraint; the other two are preferences.
2. **Residency.** Regulations or internal policy may require data to stay in a jurisdiction. The
   control plane determines which data-plane regions — and therefore which jurisdictions — are
   available to you.
3. **Endpoint.** The API base URL differs per control plane, so the choice propagates into every
   client, SDK, and Terraform configuration that talks to Clumio.

## Where to go next

* [Supported regions](/reference/regions) — the full control-plane and data-plane mapping.
* [API regional endpoints](/api-reference/regions) — the base URL for each control plane.
* [Cross-region and cross-account restore](/restore/cross-region-account) — moving recovered data.
* [What is Clumio?](/get-started/what-is-clumio) — the wider overview.