Agentic Data Plane

Private Environments

Every Agentic Data Plane environment carries a network access setting that your organization chooses in Redpanda Cloud when it creates the environment. Public access lets people and applications reach the environment’s endpoints from anywhere on the internet, with authentication and TLS protecting every request. Private access keeps the endpoints reachable only inside the environment’s private network, so ai.redpanda.com and rpk ai work only from a machine on that network. Private is a deliberate choice, not a fault. From a laptop outside that network, requests time out. This page explains what changes, how ai.redpanda.com and rpk ai tell you, and the two ways to work with it.

After reading this page, you will be able to:

  • Explain what a Private environment means for ai.redpanda.com, rpk ai, and the applications that call your AI Gateway

  • Describe how ai.redpanda.com and rpk ai tell you an environment is private

  • Choose between opening the environment’s endpoints to the internet and connecting from its private network

What Private means

Private applies to the environment’s data plane endpoints. Those endpoints serve:

  • The pages in ai.redpanda.com that show the environment’s data, such as agents, MCP servers, LLM providers, and transcripts.

  • Every rpk ai command that reads or changes the environment.

  • The AI Gateway proxy URL that your applications call.

  • The MCP server URLs that remote MCP clients connect to, and the A2A endpoints of your agents.

Signing in to ai.redpanda.com and choosing an environment work from anywhere, because they go through Redpanda Cloud rather than the environment itself. The pages at cloud.redpanda.com work from anywhere too.

Workloads that already run inside the environment’s network, or on a network connected to it, are unaffected. For them, a private environment is fully functional. The gap opens only when a person on a laptop, or a client on the public internet, tries to reach the endpoints directly.

How to recognize a private environment

Agentic Data Plane marks private environments wherever you select one.

  • In ai.redpanda.com, the environment picker labels the environment Private. Hovering over the label explains that the environment requires VPN or PrivateLink access to its private network.

  • If every environment in your organization is private, ai.redpanda.com doesn’t select one for you. It shows the list with a note that these environments require private network access, and asks you to connect to the private network before you select one.

  • If you select a private environment and the connection fails, ai.redpanda.com replaces the page with one that asks you to connect to your private environment. That page names the environment, tells you to ask your administrator how to connect, and offers Reload page for after you’ve connected.

  • When you select a private environment in rpk ai, the CLI prints a warning that the environment is private and that its endpoints resolve only on its private network. Commands that reach the environment then time out until you connect.

A timeout with a correct URL, valid credentials, and no permission error is the usual sign that you’re on the wrong network.

Public or private

Both settings protect the endpoints with authentication and TLS. They differ in who can reach the endpoints at all.

Aspect Public Private

Who can reach the endpoints

Anyone on the internet who can authenticate

Only clients inside the environment’s private network, or on a network connected to it

ai.redpanda.com and rpk ai from a laptop

Work from anywhere

Work only from a machine on the private network

Protection

Authentication and TLS on every request

Network isolation, plus authentication and TLS on every request

Fits when

People and tools reach the environment from many places, and authentication is the control you rely on

Policy requires that the endpoints are never reachable from the internet

Choose how to reach a private environment

If your environment is private and people can’t reach it, you have two ways forward. Open the endpoints if authentication and TLS meet your security requirements. Connect from the private network if policy requires that the endpoints are never reachable from the internet.

Open the endpoints to the internet

An administrator changes the environment’s network access in Redpanda Cloud:

  1. In Redpanda Cloud, open Redpanda Clusters in the sidebar. Open the cluster that has your environment’s name, then click Dataplane settings.

  2. Next to API gateway access, click Edit, then select Public. The form warns that this exposes the endpoints to the internet, and that authentication and TLS still protect them.

  3. Click Save.

  4. Wait for the environment to finish updating, then reload ai.redpanda.com.

The endpoints stay protected. Every request still has to authenticate, and traffic is still encrypted with TLS. Public access changes who can reach the endpoints, not who can use them.

This option isn’t available to every organization, and changing it requires a Redpanda Cloud permission that not every role includes. If you don’t see the setting, or the change is rejected, contact Redpanda Support.

Connect from the private network

If the endpoints must stay private, reach them from the environment’s private network, or from a network connected to it. Use one of these paths:

  • VPC peering between a VPC you own and the environment’s VPC. Run your self-managed agents, test harnesses, and applications in that VPC, and they reach the endpoints directly. For the steps, see Peer a VPC with an Environment.

  • A VPN that connects your computer or office network to the environment’s VPC, for people who use ai.redpanda.com or rpk ai. For example, use AWS Client VPN from your computer, or Google Cloud Classic VPN from your office network. For the steps, see Connect to a Private Environment from Your Computer.

  • A private endpoint service, such as AWS PrivateLink or Google Cloud Private Service Connect, between your network and the environment. To set one up for your environment, contact Redpanda Support.

After your machine is on the private network, reload ai.redpanda.com or rerun the rpk ai command.

Next steps