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Zero Data Infrastructure Requirements

Alation AI runs as an add-on on the Alation Agent. Before installing the add-on, the following backing services must be provisioned in the customer’s environment.

This section assumes the Alation Agent is already set up and registered with the Alation cloud instance.

ServiceRequiredPurposeRecommended Version
PostgreSQLYesChat logs, agent configs, task queue14+
RedisYesCaching, rate limiting, session state6+
ElasticsearchNoSample value storage for AI-powered search9+
S3-compatible storageNoArtifact storage (query results, charts)Any S3-compatible API
LLM API accessYesLanguage model inferenceOpenAI-compatible or AWS Bedrock

The Alation AI add-on configuration wizard collects connection parameters for each service during installation. The sections below list what will be requested.

Required. Used to store chat history, agent configurations, evaluation sets, and background task state. All customer data is encrypted at rest.

ParameterDescription
HostHostname or service address of the PostgreSQL instance
PortConnection port (default: 5432)
Database NameName of the database to use
UsernameDatabase user
PasswordDatabase user password

Required. Used for caching, rate limiting, and session state.

ParameterDescription
Redis URIConnection URI (e.g., redis://redis-master:6379)
Use Redis ClusterEnable if connecting to a Redis Cluster deployment (default: off)

Optional. When enabled, Alation AI uses Elasticsearch to store and search sample values from customer data sources, improving agent quality.

Enabling Elasticsearch also requires access to an embeddings model endpoint for vectorizing sample data. See LLM API Access below for configuring AI/ML models.

ParameterDescription
Enable Elasticsearch for SamplingToggle to enable (default: off)
Elasticsearch HostHostname of the Elasticsearch instance
Elasticsearch API KeyAPI key for authentication (optional)

Optional. Used for storing tool-generated artifacts (query results, charts). Defaults to in-memory storage if not configured.

ParameterDescription
Asset Storage BackendSelect “S3” to enable (default: In-Memory)
S3 Bucket NameName of the S3 bucket for artifact storage

You will need to set up an LLM provider and configure your agents to use it. See the following docs for more information:

All services listed above must be network-reachable from the Alation Agent host. Verify that firewall rules and/or security groups permit connectivity from the agent to each backing service.