---
title: "Plan your deployment"
---
Everything in this section is a decision you make before touching a server: what the components are, how big each one needs to be, and what the requirements are for the versions you'll run. Work through the pages in order.

<CardGrid columns={3} cards={[
  {
    title: 'Application architecture',
    description: 'The components of a Mattermost deployment and how they fit together: access layer, application layer, and the database, file storage, search, and cache behind them.',
    to: '/deployment-guide/application-architecture',
  },
  {
    title: 'Size your deployment',
    description: 'Pick a scale tier, deployment type, and hosting provider to get a target architecture diagram and a bill of materials sized to those choices.',
    to: '/deployment-guide/deployment-architecture',
  },
  {
    title: 'Software and hardware requirements',
    description: 'Minimum client, server, database, and hardware requirements, including the minimum PostgreSQL version policy.',
    to: '/deployment-guide/software-hardware-requirements',
  },
]} />

## What to decide here

Sizing depends on more than user count. Before you move on to [Prepare](/deployment-guide/server/preparations), settle:

- **Expected user count and growth.** Sizing is driven by concurrent users, not registered users. [Size your deployment](/deployment-guide/deployment-architecture) maps a scale tier to a bill of materials.
- **Whether you need high availability.** HA changes the topology, the licensing, and the deployment method. See [High availability cluster-based deployment](/deployment-guide/server/high-availability-cluster-based-deployment).
- **Your backup and disaster recovery requirements.** These are deployment-time architecture decisions, not day-2 tasks. See [Back up and recover](/deployment-guide/backup-disaster-recovery).
- **Which deployment method fits your environment.** Kubernetes, Linux, or containers. The trade-offs are compared in [Deploy the Mattermost server](/deployment-guide/server/deploy-server#deployment-options).
- **Security and compliance constraints.** If you're deploying air-gapped, into a coalition network, or under a compliance framework, start from [Deployment Scenarios](/deployment-guide/deployment-scenarios/deployment-scenarios-index), because those constraints shape every decision that follows.
- **Integrations with existing systems.** Identity provider, SMTP relay, push notification service, and search infrastructure all need to exist before you cut over users.

Not deploying it yourself? [Deployment Solution Programs](/get-help/deployment-solution-programs) covers the third-party and community-maintained solutions that deploy Mattermost for you, and the standards each recognition tier commits to.