Application Management

Overview

An application represents the software application or its component/service which you are going to deploy using Spinnaker and all of its configurations, including the infrastructure that it would get deployed onto. It consists of the following components:

• The software application/service that would be deployed

• The pipelines that are responsible for processing it

• The infrastructure to run the services:

  • Clusters

  • Server groups

  • Firewalls

  • Load Balancers

• Canary configs

While accessing a new Spinnaker instance, you may find some existing applications when you go to the Applications tab. If you install Spinnaker using Kubernetes on an existing cluster, these applications are acquired from the existing infrastructure.

Don't delete or repurpose any of them to use as your own application. We recommend that you create new applications and create your applications pipelines.

Spinnaker can be used for deploying both monolithic and cloud native applications. In the case of cloud native applications, We always recommend that you create a new application for each microservice in cloud native applications. In Spinnaker, there is no specific rule that defines the level at which services can be combined into a single application. However, considering that an application is responsible for all the containers to bake, manage the canary configs, manage infrastructure, and much more, it is always a good idea not to put too much into one application.

An application is the starting point of your interaction with Spinnaker. Only after you've created an application can you create a pipeline for that application, define the target environment on which the application would be deployed (server groups, load balancers, etc.), and modify the application.