Deploying Applications

OpenChoreo deploys your components through a chain of resources that separate what you want to deploy from where and how it gets deployed. This model enables reliable rollbacks, environment-specific configuration, and controlled promotion across environments.

How Deployment Works

When you create a Component and Workload, OpenChoreo creates a deployment chain:

• ComponentRelease: an immutable snapshot that freezes your Component's configuration, including the ComponentType spec, Traits, parameters, and Workload. A new release is only created when something changes.
• ReleaseBinding: binds a ComponentRelease to a specific environment (e.g., development, staging, production). This is where environment-specific overrides are applied.
• Kubernetes resources: the ReleaseBinding produces the final Deployment, Service, and HTTPRoute resources on the data plane.

Deployment Pipeline

Each Project references a DeploymentPipeline that defines the promotion order between environments. For example, the default pipeline promotes through:

development → staging → production

When you deploy a component, it goes to the first environment in the pipeline. You then promote it to subsequent environments either manually or automatically.

autoDeploy

When autoDeploy: true is set on a Component, OpenChoreo automatically creates a ReleaseBinding for the first environment in the deployment pipeline whenever a new ComponentRelease is created. This means:

• Creating a Component with autoDeploy: true deploys it to the first environment immediately
• Updating the Workload creates a new release and deploys it automatically
• You still need to promote to subsequent environments manually or via GitOps

Without autoDeploy, you deploy manually using the CLI or Backstage UI.

What's Next

• Deploy and Promote: deploy to environments and promote across the pipeline
• Environment Overrides: configure environment-specific parameters
• Logs and Troubleshooting: view logs and manage deployments