{"id":3916,"date":"2022-01-18T17:09:05","date_gmt":"2022-01-18T17:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/01\/18\/patreon-streamlines-spinnaker-deployment-with-help-from-armory\/"},"modified":"2022-01-18T17:09:05","modified_gmt":"2022-01-18T17:09:05","slug":"patreon-streamlines-spinnaker-deployment-with-help-from-armory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/01\/18\/patreon-streamlines-spinnaker-deployment-with-help-from-armory\/","title":{"rendered":"Patreon streamlines Spinnaker deployment with help from Armory"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\n
<\/p>\n

\n

Although community-supported open-source software has grown in popularity and importance<\/a>, businesses often rely on paid-for subscriptions<\/a> for OSS implementations that provide technology support, more security and functionality for operation at scale.<\/p>\n

Content crowdfunding platform Patreon Inc. has turned to the startup Armory Inc. to deploy the open-source continuous delivery software Spinnaker as a cloud service. The idea was to solve problems with software delivery in a faster, easier and more cost-effective way, according to Ian Delahorne<\/a> (pictured, right), staff site reliability engineer at Patreon.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Patreon [Site Reliability Engineering] team was and is fairly small,\u201d he said. \u201cWe could run Spinnaker on our own\u00a0if we wanted to, but then we\u2019d have no time\u00a0to do anything else basically,\u00a0and that\u2019s not the best use of our creators\u2019 money. Armory, who\u2019s dedicated to Spinnaker,\u00a0is involved in the open-source project, but also they\u2019re experts on this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Delahorne and Ben Mappen<\/a> (pictured, left), co-founder and senior vice president of strategic partnerships at Armory, spoke with John Furrier<\/a>, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media\u2019s livestreaming studio, for a CUBE conversation in advance of the Jan. 26\u00a0AWS Startup Showcase: Open Cloud Innovations<\/a> event. They discussed the business problems Armory was able to solve for Patreon, how Armory built its product on an open-source project, and the benefits of open-source strategies. (* Disclosure below.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Freeing up the team for other tasks<\/h3>\n

The Patreon and Armory partnership began in early 2019, when the content crowdfunding platform had slow payment processing and was at risk of not paying its users on time. At this point, Patreon realized that deploying fixes to remedy this was taking too long.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re taking at least 45 minutes to deploy a new version\u00a0of the application \u2026 and we needed to get that time down,\u201d Delahorne said. \u201cWe also needed to be secure in our knowledge that the deploy was stable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Due to a shortage of human resources to solve the problem in-house, Delahorne relied on Armory to adopt Spinnaker on AWS. Armory<\/a>\u2019s Spinnaker-as-a-service cloud platform, which it pitches as scalable, flexible and secure, automates software delivery, enabling software teams to collaborate from code to cloud. Armory builds on Spinnaker\u2019s foundation with proprietary features for bolstered enterprise scale, along with enterprise-grade support.<\/p>\n

The startup\u2019s service includes tools for multicloud and hybrid environments with support for DevSecOps and compliance. The company also provides support for cloud and Kubernetes migration designed to make moving to Kubernetes or from one cloud to another through seamless workload portability.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s freed me up to work\u00a0on bigger parts of our build and deploy pipelines,\u201d Delahorne stated. \u201cIt\u2019s freed me up to work on moving\u00a0from EC2-based deploys onto a containerization strategy. It\u2019s freed me up to work\u00a0on more broader observability issues instead\u00a0of just being laser-focused\u00a0on running an operating Spinnaker.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speed and reliability are some key points<\/h3>\n

Armory has learned from its large customers over the years that being great at deploying software really comes down to three main things, the first being velocity, according to Mappen.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re deploying your software once a quarter\u00a0or even once a year,\u00a0that does no good to your customers or to your business \u2014 [it\u2019s] like just code sitting in a feature branch on a shelf,\u00a0more or less, not creating any business value,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have to ship with speed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second essential part of it is to ship with reliability, which means preventing bugs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be some outages, but one of the things that Armory provides\u00a0with Spinnaker open source is the ability\u00a0to create hardened deployment pipelines\u00a0so that you\u2019re testing the right things\u00a0at the right times with the right folks involved\u00a0to do reviews,\u201d Mappen explained. \u201cAnd if there is a problem in production,\u00a0you\u2019re isolating that problem to a small group of users.\u201d<\/p>\n

The last key element is being able to deploy \u201cmulti-target multicloud.\u201d In the AWS ecosystem, for example, it would involve EC2, ECS, EKS, Lambda, and so on, Mappen added.<\/p>\n

Spinnaker\u2019s open-source foundation is critical to the Armory\u2019s success, according to Mappen. In addition to benefiting from input from other companies with fixes and new features, Armory sees the open-source community as a great place to get feedback and find new customers who might need the enhanced level of functionality and support it can provide.<\/p>\n

For Patreon, Spinnaker being open source is also interesting.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can go ask the community\u00a0for advice on things,\u201d Delahorne said. \u201cAnd I\u2019ve also been able to commit simple bug fixes\u00a0for features that I\u2019ve needed.\u00a0I was like,\u00a0\u2018Well, I don\u2019t need to go engage Armory on this.\u00a0I can just write up a simple patch\u00a0and have that out for review.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE\u2019s and theCUBE\u2019s coverage of the\u00a0AWS Startup Showcase: Open Cloud Innovations<\/a>\u00a0event.\u00a0(* Disclosure: Armory Inc.<\/em>\u00a0sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Armory <\/em>nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)<\/i><\/p>\n