Learn More About Armory Spinnaker
Jan 7, 2017 by Ben Mappen
Have a question that’s not listed here? Email us at [email protected]
Armory recently released Armory Spinnaker v1.0. Here are some FAQs and answers about the release:
What AWS regions do you support??
We support all US regions.
What security options are available in Spinnaker?
Spinnaker supports OAuth and SAML 2.0. We wrote a blog post on how to configure Github OAuth here.
What monitoring functionality do you provide?
Our installer can be run in development mode and HA mode. When run in HA mode, we expose monitoring endpoints that you can use to forward application and system logs to services like Splunk and SumoLogic. We also deploy Spinnaker behind an ASG so that it will auto-heal itself just in case it goes down.
Does Spinnaker require Cassandra?
No, Armory Spinnaker removes the dependency on Cassandra and replaces that data store with S3. S3 is easier to manage, more stable, and comes with global redundancy and versioning so that you have a historical record of what changes and by whom as you update your config files and pipelines.
How do I upgrade Spinnaker?
If you used the existing AMI Quickstart installer, you’ll need to run an update because the AMI was created several months ago and it is about two hundred versions behind. This can be risky because there are no official Spinnaker releases today. Armory Spinnaker comes with stable releases and AWS integration tests so you can have confidence that when you update, it won’t break your system.
Does Armory Spinnaker use Redis or Elasticache?
Armory Spinnaker stands up a Redis cluster that is configured to communicate with your Spinnaker instance. We place it in the correct subnet, ensure failovers are handled properly, and configure it with enough capacity to run on your physical infrastructure. If you already have a Redis cluster, it’s easy to point Spinnaker to use your cluster.
Does Spinnaker support containers?
Spinnaker supports Kubernetes out of the box today. There are plans to add support for Mesos and ECS in 2017.
My company has strict policies around management of IAM resources. Can your installer setup just the IAM resources so that our security team can review it?
Yes, we can send you comprehensive a list of the IAM roles that you’ll need. Spinnaker requires Power User access and generally speaking, the person in your organization who is responsible for managing IAM roles is likely also the person who will need to install Spinnaker.
Does Spinnaker support declarative pipelines (“pipelines as code”)?
Yes, pipelines are represented in Spinnaker as JSON. If your goal is to maintain versioning, this can be done simply by enabling versioning on the S3 bucket that stores your pipeline configs. If your goal is to store pipeline configs in source control, we can help facilitate that. You’ll need to create the config files and store them in your repository. Then, whenever the config file changes, they will need to be POST-ed to the Spinnaker API.
