# Application Deployment

Spinnaker's application deployment feature is responsible for the continuous delivery workflow.  Some of the basic concepts of application deployment are:

* [**Pipeline**](#stage) 
* [**Stage** ](#stage)
* [**Deployment Strategies**](#deployment-strategies)

Let’s discuss and learn how these concepts work.

### **Pipeline**

The main deployment management constructor of Spinnaker is the pipeline. A pipeline defines a flow of actions in a particular sequence; for the code traversal, from commit until it is deployed in the target deployment environment. 

A pipeline comprises a series of actions known as stages. You can add/modify stages to a pipeline as you define it, allowing you to pass parameters from one stage to the next along the pipeline. The image below shows an example pipeline.

![](https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/DMFUG2uP9am-9K_Nqmhf0Uh7_JcPt-7oSHTSGNwyrhNikNvU8p8AiIm4MU40eWLhWMwlAaqsyJ15Og06-MU9rRdOwgQIrKiIt_IXq8GxxWTTEwLeEURGe3iSLeGXtMouMNm69pkk)

### **Stage**

In Spinnaker, an automatically created building block for the pipeline is known as a stage. A stage in a pipeline is used to define a specific and finite activity. Herein, You can specify an action to be performed on a specific pipeline here. You can have as many stages as you wish in a pipeline based on what actions you want to perform; for example, a stage for code build, a stage for static code analysis, a stage for code deployment, etc. 

Spinnaker can integrate with a large number of third third-party tools for performing the actions specified in a pipeline. For example, you can integrate Spinnaker with Jenkins, SonarQube, Terraform, Vault, test automation tools, etc.

### **Deployment Strategies**

Spinnaker manages cloud-native deployment strategies as exclusive constructs, handling primary arrangements such as disabling old server groups, enabling new server groups, and verifying health checks. Spinnaker backs the red/black (also known as blue/green) strategy, with rolling red/black and canary strategies in active development. This enables the user to define the custom deployment strategy based on their organization's requirements.

### Spinnaker supports

* Blue/green (AKA Red/Black) 
* Rolling Red/black 
* Highlander 
* Dark Rollout

**Blue/Green (AKA Red/Black):** Blue/Green strategy, AKA Red/black strategy consists of creating new server groups and once the new server groups become healthy, removing the old server groups from the load balancer.

**Highlander:** The highlander strategy consists of creating new server groups and once the new server groups become healthy the old server groups are deleted.

**Dark rollout (None):** Dark roll outs involve doing nothing about the old server groups. Both old and new server groups stay on the load balancer.

Refer to the figure below for a better understanding:

![](https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/2fdiJ_yNVIKu-MPzyvm5YN-xXSwkKHEQJkUsgV9lKb73gOvZFk_wWlvWAvYYZ_20fO5e-tXVo8kyGm6X8gyoo0iKHpGrTLh2A8aDgxIuYPKwNjnVVvul1MfUxNaTARII5ExsheR6)