Enterprise install
Quilt is a data mesh that verifies the integrity of your data so that teams can find, understand, and file discoveries based on data of any size or in any format.
A Quilt instance is a private portal that runs in your virtual private cloud (VPC).
We encourage users to contact us before deploying Quilt. We will make sure that you have the latest version of Quilt, and walk you through the CloudFormation deployment.
We recommend that all users do one or more of the following:
Each instance consists of a CloudFormation stack that is privately hosted in your AWS account. The stack includes backend services for the catalog, S3 proxy, SSO, user identities and IAM policies, an ElasticSearch cluster, and more.

Architecture Diagram

The above diagram is for general guidance only. See below for details.
You may provide your own VPC and subnets to a Quilt stack or have the Quilt stack create its own subnets. In both cases Quilt uses subnets and security groups to isolate network services. You may optionally provide your own VPC CIDR block with a /16 prefix if the default block of 10.0.0.0/16 conflicts with shared or peered VPC services.
Below are the subnet configurations and sizes for Quilt version 2.0 networks, new as of June 2023. The configuration is similar to the AWS Quick Start VPC.
- 2 public subnets for NAT gateways and an internet-facing application load balancer (1/4 the VPC CIDR)
- 2 private subnets for Quilt services in ECS or Lambda, and an inward facing application load balancer (1/2 of the VPC CIDR)
- 2 private subnets for intra-VPC traffic to and from the Quilt RDS database and OpenSearch domain (1/8 of the VPC CIDR)
- (1/8 of the VPC CIDR is free)
Your Quilt instance contains exactly one application load balancer that is either inward or internet-facing.
If you provide the private subnets they are expected to route outbound requests to AWS services via a NAT Gateway.
For cost-sensitive deployments, Quilt ECS services can be configured to use a single AZ.
The Quilt CloudFormation template will automatically configure appropriate instance sizes for RDS, ECS (Fargate), Lambda and Elasticsearch Service. Some users may choose to adjust the size and configuration of their Elasticsearch cluster. All other services should use the default settings.
By default, Quilt configures an Elasticsearch cluster with 3 master nodes and 2 data nodes. Please contact the Quilt support team before adjusting the size and configuration of your cluster to avoid disruption.
The infrastructure costs of running a Quilt stack vary with usage. Baseline infrastructure costs start at $620 and go up from there. See below for a breakdown of baseline costs for
us-east-1
at 744 hours per month.Service | Cost |
---|---|
Elasticsearch Service | $516.83 |
RDS | $75.56 |
ECS (Fargate) | $26.64 |
Lambda | Variable |
CloudTrail | Variable |
Athena | Variable |
Total | $619.03 + Variable Costs |
To check the status of your Quilt stack after bring-up or update, check the stack health in the CloudFormation console.
If you notice slow or incomplete search results, check the status of the Quilt Elasticsearch cluster. To find the Quilt search cluster from CloudFormation, click on the Quilt stack, then "Resources." Click on the "Search" resource.
If your cluster status is not "Green" (healthy), please contact Quilt support. Causes of unhealthy search clusters include:
- Running out of storage space
- High index rates (e.g., caused by adding or updating very large numbers of files in S3)
This deployment does not require an increase in limits for your AWS Account.
In addition to containers running in Fargate, Quilt includes a set of AWS Lambda functions. These lambda functions are not scanned by AWS Marketplace. The code for the lambda functions is open-source and has been verified through an independent security audit.
You will need the following:
- 1.An AWS account.
- 1.The service-linked role for Elasticsearch
This role is not created automatically when you use Cloudformation or other APIs.You can create the role as follows:aws iam create-service-linked-role --aws-service-name es.amazonaws.com
- 2.IAM Permissions to create the CloudFormation stack (or Add products in Service Catalog).
- 1.
- 2.
Ensure that your service role is up-to-date with the example before every stack update so as to prevent installation failures. - 3.The ability to create DNS entries, such as CNAME records, for your company's domain.
- 4.An SSL certificate in the same region as your Quilt instance to secure the domain where your users will access your Quilt instance.
- 1.For example, to make your Quilt catalog available at
https://quilt.mycompany.com
, you require a certificate for either*.mycompany.com
or for the following 3 domains:quilt.mycompany.com
,quilt-registry.mycompany.com
andquilt-s3-proxy.mycompany.com
in the AWS Certificate Manager. - 2.
- 3.The ARN for this certificate or set of certificates is required for use as the
CertificateArnELB
CloudFormation parameter.
- 5.For maximum security, Quilt requires a region that supports AWS Fargate. As of this writing, all U.S. regions support Fargate.
- 6.An S3 Bucket for your team data. This may be a new or existing bucket. The bucket should not have any notifications attached to it (
S3 Console > Bucket > Properties > Events
). Quilt will need to install its own notifications. Installing Quilt will modify the following Bucket characteristics:- 1.Permissions > CORS configuration (will be modified for secure web access).
- 2.Properties > Object-level logging (will be enabled).
- 3.Properties > Events (will add one notification).
Buckets in Quilt may choose to enable versioning or disable versioning. It is strongly recommended that you keep versioning either on or off during the entire lifetime of the bucket. Toggling versioning on and off incurs edge cases that may cause bugs with any state that Quilt stores in ElasticSearch due to inconsistent semantics ofObjectRemoved:DeleteMarkerCreated
. - 7.
- 8.A license key or an active subscription to Quilt Business on AWS Marketplace.
- 1.Click
Continue to Subscribe
on the Quilt Business Listing to subscribe then return to this page for installation instructions. - 2.The CloudFormation template and instructions on AWS Marketplace are infrequently updated and may be missing critical bugfixes.
You can install Quilt via AWS Marketplace. As indicated above, we recommend that you contact us first.
- 1.Email [email protected] with your AWS account ID to request access to Quilt through the AWS Service Catalog and to obtain a license key.
- 2.Click the service catalog link that you received from Quilt. Arrive at the Service Catalog. Click IMPORT, lower right.
- 3.Navigate to Admin > Portfolios list > Imported Portfolios. Click Quilt Enterprise.
- 4.On the Portfolio details page, click ADD USER, GROUP OR ROLE. Add any users, including yourself, whom you would like to be able to install Quilt.
- 5.Click Products list, upper left. Click the menu to the left of Quilt CloudFormation Template. Click Launch product. (In the future, use the same menu to upgrade Quilt when a new version is released.)
- 6.Continue to the CloudFormation section. Note: the following screenshots may differ slightly fromm what you see in Service Catalog.
You can perform stack update and creation with the AWS Console, AWS CLI, Terraform, or other means.
In all cases it is highly recommended that you set the
--on-failure
policy to ROLLBACK
so as to avoid incomplete rollback and problematic stack states. In the AWS Console this option appears under the phrase "Stack failure options."- 1.Specify stack details in the form of a stack name and CloudFormation parameters. Refer to the descriptions displayed above each text box for further details. Service Catalog users require a license key. See Before you install Quilt for how to obtain a license key.
- 2.If you wish to use a service role, specify it as follows:
- 3.Service Catalog users, skip this step. Under Stack creation options, enable termination protection. This protects the stack from accidental deletion. Click Next.
- 4.Service Catalog users, skip this step. Check the box asking you to acknowledge that CloudFormation may create IAM roles, then click Create.
- 5.CloudFormation may take bewteen 30 and 90 minutes to create your stack. You can monitor progress under Events. On completion you will see
CREATE_COMPLETE
. - 6.To finish the installation, you will want to view the stack Outputs.
In a separate browser window, open the DNS settings for your domain. Create the following
CNAME
records. Replace italics with the corresponding stack Outputs.CNAME | Value |
---|---|
<QuiltWebHost> Key | LoadBalancerDNSName |
<RegistryHostName> Key | LoadBalancerDNSName |
<S3ProxyHost> Key | LoadBalancerDNSName |
Quilt is now up and running. You can click on the QuiltWebHost value in Outputs and log in with your administrator password to invite users.
Major releases will be posted to AWS Marketplace. Minor releases will be announced via email and Slack. Join the Quilt mailing list or Slack Channel for updates.
To update your Quilt stack, apply the latest CloudFormation template in the CloudFormation console as follows.
- 1.Navigate to AWS Console > CloudFormation > Stacks
- 2.Select your Quilt stack
- 3.Click Update (upper right)
- 4.Choose Replace current template
- 5.Enter the Amazon S3 URL for your template
- 6.Click Next (several times) and proceed to apply the update
Your previous settings should carry over.
You can create a new Quilt stack with the same configuration as an existing stack.
Configuration here refers to the Quilt stack buckets, roles, policies, and other administrative settings, all of which are stored in an RDS instance.
Perform the following steps.
- 1.Contact your Quilt account manager for a template that supports the "existing database", "existing search", and "existing vpc" options.
- 2.Take a manual snapshot of the current Quilt database instance. For an existing Quilt stack this resource has the logical ID "DB". Note the snapshot identifier ("Snapshot name" in the AWS Console,
DBSnapshotIdentifier
in the following AWS CLI command):aws rds describe-db-snapshotsBe sure to take a manual snapshot. Do not rely on automatic snapshots, which are deleted when the parent stack is deleted. - 3.Apply the quilt Terraform module to your new template and provide the snapshot identifier to the
db_snapshot_identifier=
argument.You must use a Quilt CloudFormation template that supports an existing database, existing search domain, and existing vpc in order for the terraform modules to function properly. - 4.You now have a new Quilt stack with a configuration equivalent to your prior stack. Verify that the new stack is working as desired. Delete the old stack.
All customer data and metadata in Quilt is stored in S3. It may also be cached in Elasticsearch Service (show in red in the diagram below). No other services in the Quilt stack store customer data.

We recommend using S3 encryption and Elasticsearch Service encryption at rest to provide maximum protection.
User email addresses are stored by the Identity Service in RDS Postgres (part of the Quilt stack). User email addresses are also sent through an encrypted channel to the customer support messaging system (Intercom).
The default Quilt settings are adequate for most use cases. The following section covers advanced customization options.
The Quilt admin must log in and set the default role in order for new users to be able to sign up.

You can enable users on your Google domain to sign in to Quilt. Refer to Google's instructions on OAuth2 user agents and create authorization credentials to identify your Quilt stack to Google's OAuth 2.0 server.

Copy the
Client ID
and Client secret
to a safe place. Add <QuiltWebHost>/oauth-callback
to authorized redirect URIs.- 1.Go to Azure Portal > Active Directory > App Registrations.
- 2.Click "New Registration".
- 3.Name the app, select the Supported account types.
- 4.Click "Add a platform", "Web", and enter the
Redirect URIs
value<QuiltWebHost>/oauth-callback
. Click "Save" at the bottom. - 5.Once the application has been created you will need both its
Application (client) ID
andDirectory (tenant) ID
. - 6.Go to "Client credentials" and create a new client secret. Note you will use the
Value
(and not theSecret ID
). - 7.Your
AzureBaseUrl
will be of the formhttps://ENDPOINT/TENANT_ID
. In most casesENDPOINT
is simplylogin.microsoftonline.com
. Reference Microsoft identity platform and OpenID Connect protocol and National clouds for further details.IfAzureBaseUrl
doesn't end in/v2.0
then append/v2.0
to it. - 8.Click "Save".
- 9.Copy the
Application (client) ID
,Client secret Value
, andAzureBaseUrl
to a safe place. - 10.
- 1.Go to Okta > Admin > Applications > Applications
- 2.Click
Create App Integration
. A new modal window opens. - 3.Assign
Sign-in method
radio button toOIDC - OpenID Connect
. - 4.Assign
Application type
radio button toWeb Application
. - 5.Click the
Next
button. - 6.Rename the default
App integration name
toQuilt
or something distinctive for your organization to identify it. - 7.
- 8.Configure the new web app integration as follows:
- 1.For
Grant type
check the following:Authorization Code
,Refresh Token
, andImplicit (hybrid)
. - 2.To the
Sign-in redirect URIs
add<QuiltWebHost>/oauth-callback
URL. - 3.Leave the
Allow wildcard * in the login URI redirect
checkbox unchecked. - 4.Optionally add to the
Sign-out redirect URIs
(if desired by your organization). - 5.For the
Assignments > Controlled Access
selection, choose the option desired by your organization.
- 9.Once you click the
Save
button you will have a new application integration to review.- 1.If it's undefined, update the
Initiate login URI
to your<QuiltWebHost>
URL. - 2.Copy the
Client ID
,Secret
, andBase URL
to a safe place
- 10.Go to Okta > Security > API > Authorization servers
- 1.You should see a
default
entry with theAudience
value set toapi://default
, and anIssuer URI
that looks like the following:<MY_COMPANY>.okta.com/oauth2/default - 2.
- 11.
- 1.Go to Administration > Applications > Custom Connectors
- 2.Click
New Connector
- 1.Name the connector Quilt Connector or something similar
- 2.Set
Sign on method
toOpenID Connect
- 3.Set
Login URL
to<QuiltWebHost>/oauth-callback
- 4.Click "Save"
- 3.Go back to Applications > Custom Connectors
- 4.Click
Add App to Connector
- 5.Save the app (be sure to save it for the Organization)
- 6.Go to Applications > Applications > Your new app > SSO
- 1.Click SSO. Copy the
Client ID
,ClientSecret
andIssuer URL
to a safe place. - 2."Application Type" should be set to
Web
. - 3."Token Endpoint" should be set to
POST
.
- 7.Add Your new app to the users who need to access Quilt:
- 8.
Now you can connect Quilt to your SSO provider. In the Quilt template (AWS Console > CloudFormation > Quilt stack > Update > Use current template > Next > Specify stack details), under
Auth Settings
set the PasswordAuth
to Enabled
.Next, select your
SingleSignOnProvider
from the dropdown list (one of Google, Okta, OneLogin, Azure).
Use the following settings (depending on your SSO provider):
CFT Parameter | Google SSO | Okta SSO | OneLogin SSO | Azure SSO |
---|---|---|---|---|
SingleSignOnClientId | Client ID | Client ID | Client ID | Application (client) ID |
SingleSignOnClientSecret | Client secret | Secret | ClientSecret | Client secret Value |
SingleSignOnBaseUrl | N/A | Base URL | Issuer URL | AzureBaseUrl |
These instructions document how to set up an existing role for use with Quilt. If the role you want to use doesn't exist yet, create it now. For guidance creating IAM roles, see: IAM best practices, and the Principle of Least Privilege
Go to your Quilt stack in CloudFormation. Go to
Outputs
, then find RegistryRoleARN
and copy its value. It should look something like this: arn:aws:iam::000000000000:role/stackname-ecsTaskExecutionRole
.Go to the IAM console and navigate to
Roles
. Select the role you want to use. Go to the Trust Relationships
tab for the role, and select Edit Trust Relationship
. The statement might look something like this:{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
"... one or more statements"
]
}
Add an object to the beginning of the Statement array with the following contents:
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Principal": {
"AWS": "$YOUR_REGISTRY_ROLE_ARN"
},
"Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
},
Note the comma after the object. Your trust relationship should now look something like this:
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Principal": {
"AWS": "$YOUR_REGISTRY_ROLE_ARN"
},
"Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
},
"... whatever was here before"
]
}
You can now configure a Quilt Role with this role (using the Catalog's admin panel, or
quilt3.admin.create_role
).In order for Quilt to access and index buckets encrypted with SSE-KMS, you must do three things:
- 1.Add KMS Key Usage to Quilt Permission Boundary
- 2.Add Quilt Principals to KMS Key Policy
- 3.Add KMS Key Access to a Source=Quilt Role
NOTE: This will not work with the default Source=Custom Roles.
By default, AWS does not allow anything in your account to access KMS. If you haven't done so already, create an IAM policy that explicitly enables KMS access.
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": {
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": [
"kms:Encrypt",
"kms:Decrypt"
],
"Resource": "arn:aws:kms:us-west-2:111122223333:key/*"
}
}
Go to CloudFormation > Your Quilt Stack -> Update -> Parameters and add the ARN of that IAM policy to
ManagedUserRoleExtraPolicies
at the bottom of the page:
If other policies are already in that field, you will need to add a comma before appending the ARN.
In order for Quilt to index buckets with SSE-KMS, you must add certain principals to the corresponding key policy. Go to CloudFormation > Your Quilt Stack > Resources and look for IAM roles with the following logical IDs:
AmazonECSTaskExecutionRole
PkgEventsRole
PkgSelectLambdaRole
SearchHandlerRole
T4BucketReadRole
T4BucketWriteRole
Note the ARN for each of the above logical IDs and add an Allow statement similar to the following to the KMS key policy:
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Principal": {
"AWS": [
"<RoleARN-1>",
...
"<RoleARN-N>"
]
},
"Action": [
"kms:Decrypt",
"kms:GenerateDataKey"
],
"Resource": "*"
}
Finally, you need create a restricted policy that gives a Quilt role access to the keys for specific buckets, e.g:
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": {
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": [
"kms:Encrypt",
"kms:Decrypt"
],
"Resource": [
"arn:aws:kms:us-west-2:111122223333:key/1234abcd-12ab-34cd-56ef-1234567890ab",
"arn:aws:kms:us-west-2:111122223333:key/0987dcba-09fe-87dc-65ba-ab0987654321"
]
}
}
You can now create a Quilt Policy from this policy using the Catalog's admin panel. Afterwards, you can attach that Policy to a user-defined Quilt Role (which has Source=Quilt in the Roles panel, as opposed to system-defined Source=Custom Roles).
All data and metadata in Quilt is stored in S3. S3 data is automatically backed up (replicated across multiple available zones). To protect against accidental deletion or overwriting of data, we strongly recommend enabling object versioning for all S3 buckets connected to Quilt.
No data will be lost if a Quilt stack goes down. The Quilt search indexes will be automatically rebuilt when buckets are added to a new stack.
To protect against data loss in the event of a region failure, enable S3 Bucket Replication on all S3 buckets.
The time to restore varies with storage needs, but a <2-hour recovery time objective (RTO) and <15 minute recovery point objective (RPO) are generally possible.
To restore Quilt in your backup region:
- 1.Create a new Quilt stack from the same CloudFormation template in the backup region.
- 2.Connect the replica buckets (in the backup region) to your Quilt stack. In the Quilt catalog, select "Users and Buckets"->"Buckets" and enter the bucket information.
Support is available to all Quilt customers by:
- online chat (in the Quilt catalog)
Quilt guarantees response to support issues according to the following SLAs for Quilt Business and Quilt Enterprise customers.
Text | Initial Response | Temporary Resolution |
---|---|---|
Priority 1 | 1 business day | 3 business days |
Priority 2 | 2 business days | 5 business days |
Priority 3 | 3 business days | N/A |
Text | Initial Response | Temporary Resolution |
---|---|---|
Priority 1 | 4 business hours | 1 business day |
Priority 2 | 1 business day | 2 business days |
Priority 3 | 1 business days | N/A |
- Business Day means Monday through Friday (PST), excluding holidays observed by Quilt Data.
- Business Hours means 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. (PST) on Business Days.
- Priority 1 means a critical problem with the Software in which the Software inoperable;
- Priority 2 means a problem with the Software in which the Software is severely limited or degraded, major functions are not performing properly, and the situation is causing a significant impact to Customer’s operations or productivity;
- Priority 3 means a minor or cosmetic problem with the Software in which any of the following occur: the problem is an irritant, affects nonessential functions, or has minimal impact to business operations; the problem is localized or has isolated impact; the problem is an operational nuisance; the problem results in documentation errors; or the problem is any other problem that is not a Priority 1 or a Priority 2, but is otherwise a failure of the Software to conform to the Documentation or Specifications;
- Temporary Resolution means a temporary fix or patch that has been implemented and incorporated into the Software by Quilt Data to restore Software functionality.
Last modified 2mo ago