What is Spinnaker?

Spinnaker is an open-source platform that helps software teams automate the process of delivering code changes to production. It ties together building, testing, and deploying applications so they can be released quickly and safely.

Let's break it down

  • Open-source: Free for anyone to use, modify, and share.
  • Platform: A collection of tools and services that work together as one system.
  • Automate: Do repetitive tasks automatically, without manual clicks.
  • Delivering code changes: Moving new or updated software from developers’ computers to the live environment that users interact with.
  • Production: The real, public-facing version of an application.
  • Building, testing, deploying: Three main steps - compile the code, verify it works, and then make it available to users.

Why does it matter?

Because it speeds up the release cycle, reduces human error, and gives teams confidence that new features or fixes reach users reliably. Faster, safer releases mean better user experiences and a competitive edge for businesses.

Where is it used?

  • A large e-commerce company uses Spinnaker to push updates to its website multiple times a day without downtime.
  • A financial services firm deploys micro-services to Kubernetes clusters across several regions, ensuring compliance and quick rollbacks if needed.
  • A gaming studio releases new game builds to its cloud servers, coordinating canary releases to test performance with a small player base first.
  • An airline’s mobile app team automates nightly builds and deployments to both iOS and Android stores, keeping the app up-to-date with minimal manual work.

Good things about it

  • Supports many cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure, Kubernetes, etc.) out of the box.
  • Provides built-in strategies like blue/green and canary deployments for safer releases.
  • Strong community and backing from major companies (Netflix, Google, Microsoft).
  • Extensible via plugins and custom stages to fit unique workflows.
  • Offers a visual UI that lets non-engineers track pipelines and approvals.

Not-so-good things

  • Can be complex to set up and requires expertise in CI/CD concepts.
  • The UI may feel heavy and slower for very large pipelines.
  • Limited native support for some newer deployment targets (e.g., serverless functions) without extra plugins.
  • Ongoing maintenance overhead; you need to keep the Spinnaker version and its dependencies up to date.