# Community Edition

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**Community Edition is not for production workloads.** Use it for labs, evaluation, and learning only.
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**New release!**

For details on the latest release of <code class="expression">space.vars.product\_name</code> Community Edition, see the [Release Notes](https://app.gitbook.com/o/hrsUIpZSwrrTfZg21In1/s/kv9S3LUlkBax2ADEKbs7/).
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## Community Edition At a Glance

Community Edition (CE) is the community-supported, free, full-featured version of <code class="expression">space.vars.product\_name</code>.

You get the same core virtualization experience as the commercial product.

CE is different in how it’s deployed and supported:

* **Single-host control plane.** CE runs the management plane on one machine.
* **You bring the hypervisors.** Workloads always run on separate hypervisor hosts.
* **Community support.** Use <https://www.reddit.com/r/platform9/> and the docs.

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If you want a Platform9-managed control plane, use SaaS Hosted. If you need a customer-managed highly available control plane, use [Self Hosted](https://docs.platform9.com/private-cloud-director/getting-started/self-hosted).

See [Getting Started](https://docs.platform9.com/private-cloud-director/getting-started/getting-started) for a quick comparison.
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***

## How Community Edition Works

CE is two system types working together:

* **CE host (control plane)**
* **Hypervisor hosts (run VMs)**

### Community Edition Host (Control Plane)

The **CE host** is where you manage the platform.

It:

* Serves the web UI
* Exposes REST APIs
* Monitors hosts and VMs
* Orchestrates lifecycle operations (create, resize, migrate, HA, and more)
* Hosts Grafana dashboards

It does **not** run your VMs.

### Hypervisor Hosts (Compute)

**Hypervisor hosts** run the virtual machines.

Each hypervisor runs a **Platform9 host agent**. The agent:

* Connects the host to the CE control plane
* Executes lifecycle actions
* Sends health and metrics back to CE

### Shared Storage (Optional, But Recommended)

Shared storage (NFS, iSCSI, and other supported backends) enables:

* **Persistent volumes** for VM disks
* **Live migration** between hypervisors
* **VM High Availability (VM HA)** that can restart VMs on another host

If you use **only local storage** on hypervisors:

* Live migration requires VM shutdown.
* VM disks stay tied to the original host.
* VM HA can’t protect against host loss for those VMs.

***

## Get Started

1. Validate requirements in [Prerequisites](https://docs.platform9.com/private-cloud-director/getting-started/getting-started-with-community-edition/prerequisites).
2. Run the standard install in [Install](https://docs.platform9.com/private-cloud-director/getting-started/getting-started-with-community-edition/install).
3. If you need custom CIDRs, domains, or other changes, read [Custom Installation](https://docs.platform9.com/private-cloud-director/getting-started/getting-started-with-community-edition/custom-installation) **before** installing.
4. If anything fails, use [Common Issues](https://docs.platform9.com/private-cloud-director/getting-started/getting-started-with-community-edition/common-issues).

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Want a walkthrough instead of reference docs? Use the tutorial: [Beginner's Guide to Deploying PCD Community Edition](https://docs.platform9.com/private-cloud-director/tutorials/beginners-guide-to-deploying-pcd-community-edition).
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## Operations

* Backup strategy and procedures: [Backup and Restore CE](https://docs.platform9.com/private-cloud-director/getting-started/getting-started-with-community-edition/backup-and-restore-ce)