Deployment overview

Cloud

Server v4+

Introduction

Once a software application has been developed and tested, it needs to be deployed and made available for its intended audience. With CircleCI, you can deploy to virtually any target.

You can also configure CircleCI to integrate with other services for:

QA and testing
Feature management
Deployment strategies such as blue-green or canary deployment

Customize your configuration to match your requirements, whether you need a fully automated process or one that requires manual approval.

Deploy to Kubernetes? Refer to our Releases overview page to start managing your releases in the CircleCI web app. CircleCI releases is in open preview.

The basics of deployment

Here are the core concepts you need to get a deployment set up:

Deployment job: To deploy your application, add a job to your .circleci/config.yml file and configure the job to run the steps you require.

Add a release log step to your deployment job to view a log of releases in the CircleCI web app. See the Release markers guide to learn more.
Deployment parameters: You may need to add environment variables and SSH keys to fulfill your deployment steps. Environment variables can be:
- Defined within your configuration
- Added to the project itself through the CircleCI web app:
  - Add project-level environment variables
  - Add project-level SSH keys
Manual approval: If your deployment strategy requires a manual approval step, you can include a hold/approve job in your workflow. This job will create a manual approval button visible in the CircleCI web app workflows map.

If you need to restrict connections, consider enabling IP ranges for your deployment job.

Using orbs to simplify deployment

Orbs are packages of reusable configuration. For simpler deployment pipelines, you can use orbs to achieve the results you need with minimal configuration. Orbs are available for many common deployment targets.

For example, the AWS CodeDeploy orb has a pre-configured deploy job that you can include in your configuration with the single line aws-code-deploy/deploy once the orb has been invoked by adding the orbs stanza:

version: 2.1

orbs:
  aws-code-deploy: circleci/aws-code-deploy@x.y
workflows:
  deploy_application:
    jobs:
      - aws-code-deploy/deploy:
          application-name: myApplication
          bundle-bucket: myApplicationS3Bucket
          bundle-key: myS3BucketKey
          deployment-group: myDeploymentGroup
          service-role-arn: myDeploymentGroupRoleARN

Under the hood, this orb creates, bundles, and deploys your application using your specified parameters set under the aws-code-deploy/deploy job declaration.

Check out the full range of available orbs in the orbs registry. If the orb you need has not been created yet, consider authoring one!

Using images to simplify deployment

CircleCI provides maintained Docker images (convenience images) that contain the tools required for common deployment scenarios. Convenience images provide fast spin-up times, reliability, and stability. Visit the CircleCI Developer Hub to learn more about each convenience image: