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Spinnaker

Multi-cloud continuous delivery platform for fast, safe software releases.

Spinnaker enables teams to automate, visualize, and govern deployments across AWS, GCP, Kubernetes and other clouds, offering canary analysis, guardrails, and extensible plugins for reliable, high-velocity delivery.

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Overview

Overview

Spinnaker is a continuous delivery platform that lets engineering and operations teams release software changes with speed and confidence. It provides a unified interface—both a graphical UI and config‑as‑code—so users can design, visualize, and manage pipelines that span multiple cloud providers such as AWS, Google Cloud, and Kubernetes.

Capabilities & Deployment

The platform’s microservice architecture is orchestrated via the Halyard CLI or the Kubernetes Operator, handling lifecycle management and scaling. Built‑in canary analysis, guardrails, and a robust plugin framework enable safe rollouts, compliance enforcement, and easy integration with existing CI tools. Spinnaker’s managed delivery feature adds declarative definitions for common infrastructure, further simplifying multi‑environment promotions.

Who Benefits

Enterprises and large development groups that require multi‑cloud support, visual pipeline authoring, and extensibility will find Spinnaker a strong fit, while its active community and extensive documentation help accelerate adoption.

Highlights

Unified multi-cloud deployment engine (AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, etc.)
Automated canary analysis and safety guardrails
Config-as-code and visual pipeline editor
Extensible plugin framework with Halyard CLI and Kubernetes Operator

Pros

  • Supports all major public clouds out of the box
  • Mature codebase backed by Netflix and other industry leaders
  • Rich UI and declarative pipelines reduce manual errors
  • Strong community and extensive integrations

Considerations

  • Complex microservice architecture can increase operational overhead
  • Initial setup and scaling may require dedicated expertise
  • Resource‑intensive compared to lightweight CD tools
  • Plugin ecosystem may need careful version management

Managed products teams compare with

When teams consider Spinnaker, these hosted platforms usually appear on the same shortlist.

Buddy logo

Buddy

CI/CD automation platform focused on easy pipeline design and fast deployments for developers

Buildkite logo

Buildkite

Scalable CI/CD platform that runs pipelines on your own infrastructure with a centralized web UI for build management

CircleCI logo

CircleCI

CI/CD platform to build, test, and deploy code automatically

Looking for a hosted option? These are the services engineering teams benchmark against before choosing open source.

Fit guide

Great for

  • Enterprises needing reliable multi-cloud deployments with safety controls
  • Teams that require visual pipeline authoring alongside GitOps
  • Organizations with existing CI tools seeking a dedicated CD layer
  • Companies that value extensibility through plugins and custom integrations

Not ideal when

  • Small projects that prefer minimal infrastructure footprint
  • Teams without ops resources to manage microservice components
  • Use cases limited to single-cloud deployments with simple pipelines
  • Environments where low-latency, lightweight CD is critical

How teams use it

Canary release of a new microservice across AWS and Kubernetes

Detect performance regressions early while automatically promoting the version to production once safety thresholds are met.

GitOps-driven infrastructure provisioning for multiple teams

Developers trigger environment creation via pull requests, with Spinnaker orchestrating security groups and cloud resources consistently.

Regulated financial application deployment with compliance guardrails

Automated checks enforce policy compliance before any code reaches production, reducing audit risk.

Multi-cloud blue-green rollout for a web application

Seamlessly shift traffic between old and new versions across GCP and Azure, ensuring zero-downtime releases.

Tech snapshot

Java40%
Groovy26%
TypeScript14%
Kotlin13%
JavaScript4%
HTML2%

Tags

continuous-deploymentspinnakercontinuous-delivery

Frequently asked questions

What cloud providers does Spinnaker support?

Spinnaker includes native integrations for AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes, and many additional providers via extensible microservices.

How is Spinnaker installed and managed?

Installation can be performed with the Halyard CLI or the Kubernetes Operator, which handle the lifecycle of Spinnaker’s microservices.

Can Spinnaker be used with GitOps workflows?

Yes, Spinnaker supports config-as-code and can trigger pipelines from Git events, enabling full GitOps pipelines.

Is there a plugin system for custom integrations?

Spinnaker’s plugin framework allows developers to add new system integrations without modifying the core platform.

What licensing governs Spinnaker?

Spinnaker is released under the Apache-2.0 license.

Project at a glance

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LicenseApache-2.0
Repo age11 years old
Last commit16 hours ago
Primary languageJava

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