Multi-Area Deployments — Agent Areas

Architecture Overview

// Typical enterprise multi-area deployment:
Octopus API Cluster (3 nodes)
├── Shared Infrastructure
│   ├── SQL Server (Octopus_* tables — all tenants, all areas)
│   ├── Qdrant (separate collection per agent → per area effectively)
│   └── Redis (session cache, distributed token counting)
└── Logic Layer
    ├── Area: HR       → 3 agents × 5 knowledge docs × 8 tools
    ├── Area: Finance  → 2 agents × 4 knowledge docs × 6 tools
    ├── Area: IT       → 4 agents × 10 knowledge docs × 12 tools
    ├── Area: Legal    → 1 agent  × 8 knowledge docs × 3 tools
    └── Area: Public   → 1 agent  × 3 knowledge docs × 0 tools (public chatbot)

Performance Considerations at Scale

Concern	Impact	Mitigation
Many vector collections in Qdrant	Memory overhead per collection	Qdrant's collection memory is lazy-loaded; 50+ collections are fine on a 16GB instance
SQL connection pool	Concurrent agents share the same pool	Set appropriate pool size; read replicas for read-heavy areas
LLM API rate limits	High concurrent usage hits provider limits	Configure per-area rate limiting; use multiple API keys if needed
Embedding API calls	Every turn triggers an embedding call	Cache query embeddings for identical messages within a short window

Area-Level Monitoring

// Per-area metrics exposed via /metrics (Prometheus format):
octopus_turns_total{area="HR", agent="hr_assistant"} 1247
octopus_turns_total{area="Finance", agent="expense_advisor"} 328

octopus_tool_calls_total{area="HR", tool="get_leave_balance"} 892
octopus_semantic_retrievals{area="HR", agent="hr_assistant", score_bucket="0.75-0.85"} 456

octopus_token_usage{area="HR", type="input"}  1_234_567
octopus_token_usage{area="HR", type="output"}   312_890

// Area-specific dashboards recommended in Grafana for area-by-area monitoring

Multi-Tenant vs. Multi-Area

Dimension	Multi-Tenant	Multi-Area
Separation boundary	Company / organisation	Department / business domain
Data isolation	Hard isolation — different SQL rows by TenantId	Logical isolation — different agents within same tenant
Admin scope	Tenant admin cannot see other tenants	Area admin cannot see other areas (unless they have OctopusTenantAdmin)
Knowledge sharing	Not possible across tenants	Possible via shared agent collection

Start Simple — Add Areas as Needed

Begin with a single area and add more areas as your deployment matures and distinct domain requirements emerge. Migrating agents between areas is straightforward — it is a configuration change, not a data migration.

← Area Routing