Two questions decide which guide to follow: where does jaque run, and how many nodes does it run on. Topologies is the mechanism behind the answers; this page is the shortcut to a guide that walks you from a fresh machine to a running jaque, one command at a time.

One node is enough for most installs: Overview, section 2, is the full argument, and the short version is that the single binary holds the scheduler, the event log and the dashboard on local disk, with no operational tax beyond keeping that one process running. An estate migrating off a single Nagios host almost always fits here, because that host already proved the capacity is enough.

Splitting by role buys independent scaling and independent failure for worker, ui, sink and notifier, and workers can sit in a network zone the engine cannot reach directly. It costs a shared log server every role now depends on, and a second decision -- how many engines -- that Cluster and coordination covers once more than one is sharing ownership of the object set.