A software release can involve several steps beyond updating a container: tests, approvals, deployment and a response when validation fails. Spinnaker provides a delivery platform for defining and running those pipelines across supported infrastructure providers. It is useful when teams need an explicit release workflow spanning those actions. Because it can deploy software and holds powerful account credentials, its permissions and persisted pipeline configuration are central operating concerns, alongside the services that run the platform itself.
Current guidance
Current project installation documentation explicitly deprecates Halyard in favor of native Kustomize configuration and links a migration path for Halyard or operator-managed installations. That makes older chart-driven setup instructions useful migration context, but not an appropriate default for a new deployment.
Spinnaker persists application settings and pipelines externally and connects to deployment accounts with powerful credentials. Plan authentication, authorization, secret storage and service sizing before exposing the UI. Select a coherent Spinnaker release and supported provider integrations instead of assuming every cloud integration listed years ago remains equally supported.
For migration, export pipeline definitions, account configuration, artifact sources, notifications and service overrides. Test a representative pipeline that includes approval, deployment and rollback behavior against a disposable target, and verify stored execution data and identity mappings as needed. If choosing a smaller GitOps workflow instead, translate pipeline intent explicitly: a reconciliation controller does not automatically reproduce multi-cloud orchestration or approval semantics. Keep deployment credentials and old storage recoverable until the replacement workflow has been accepted.
Historical upstream link check · 2026-10-09
The recorded upstream address redirects to https://spinnaker.io/ and returned HTTP 200 on 2026-10-09. Link availability does not certify the historical installation instructions or current security support.
Website availability is separate from project, chart and image support. Use the current guidance and primary sources on this page to assess the distribution.
Historical Kubedex content
Preserved for context. Commands, versions, prices and results below reflect the original research.
Spinnaker is an open source, multi-cloud continuous delivery platform for releasing software changes with high velocity and confidence.
Created at Netflix, it has been battle-tested in production by hundreds of teams over millions of deployments. It combines a powerful and flexible pipeline management system with integrations to the major cloud providers.
Multi-Cloud
Deploy across multiple cloud providers including AWS EC2, Kubernetes, Google Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Google App Engine, Microsoft Azure, and OpenStack, with Oracle Bare Metal and DC/OS coming soon.
Automated Releases
Create deployment pipelines that run integration and system tests, spin up and down server groups, and monitor your rollouts. Trigger pipelines via git events, Jenkins, Travis CI, Docker, CRON, or other Spinnaker pipelines.
Built-in Deployment Best Practices
Create and deploy immutable images for faster rollouts, easier rollbacks, and the elimination of hard to debug configuration drift issues. Leverage an immutable infrastructure in the cloud with built-in deployment strategies such as red/black and canary deployments.
Active Community
Join a community that includes Netflix, Google, Microsoft, Veritas, Target, Kenzan, Schibsted, and many others, actively working to maintain and improve Spinnaker.
Features List
- CI Integrations: Listen to events, collect artifacts, and trigger pipelines from Jenkins or Travis CI. Triggers via git, cron, or a new image in a docker registry are also supported.
- Monitoring Integrations: Tie your releases to monitoring services Datadog, Prometheus, or Stackdriver, using their metrics for canary analysis.
- CLI for Setup and Admin: Install, configure, and update your Spinnaker instance with the halyard, Spinnaker’s CLI tool.
- Deployment Strategies: Configure pipelines with built-in deployment strategies such as Highlander and red/black, with rolling red/black and canary in active development, or define your own custom strategy.
- VM Bakery: Bake immutable VM images via Packer, which comes packaged with Spinnaker and offers support for Chef and Puppet templates.
- Notifications: Set up event notifications for email, Slack, HipChat, or SMS (via Twilio).
- Role-based Access Control: Restrict access to projects or accounts by hooking into your internal authentication system using OAuth, SAML, LDAP, X.509 certs, Google groups, Azure groups, or GitHub teams.
- Manual Judgments: Require a manual approval prior to releasing an update with a manual judgment stage.
- White-listed Execution Windows: Restrict the execution of stages to certain windows of time, making sure deployments happen during off-peak traffic or when the right people are on hand to monitor the roll-out.
- Chaos Monkey Integration: Test that your application can survive instance failures by terminating them on purpose.
Sources & further reading
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