Deployment

Rolling Updates

The default strategy. Orca starts new containers, waits for health checks, then stops old ones — zero downtime:

[service.deploy]
strategy = "rolling"
max_unavailable = 1

Update an image in service.toml and redeploy:

orca deploy

Orca handles the rest: pull image, start new replicas, verify health, drain old replicas.

Canary Deployments

Split traffic between stable and canary versions:

[service.deploy]
strategy = "canary"
canary_weight = 20        # 20% traffic to new version

Canary Workflow

1. Deploy — orca deploy starts canary instances alongside stable
2. Observe — Proxy splits traffic (80% stable, 20% canary)
3. Promote — orca promote api shifts 100% to canary, removes old
4. Or rollback — orca rollback api removes canary, keeps stable

orca deploy                # Start canary
orca status                # Watch canary health
orca logs api              # Check for errors
orca promote api           # Ship it

Rollback

Every deploy is versioned. Roll back to the previous config with:

orca rollback <service>

State is persisted in ~/.orca/cluster.db (redb), so deploy history survives server restarts.

Build from Source

Orca can build images from a Git repository:

[service.build]
repo = "git@github.com:org/repo.git"
branch = "main"
dockerfile = "Dockerfile"
context = "."

Git Push Deploy

Webhooks

Register a webhook to auto-deploy on push:

orca webhooks add --repo org/myapp --service myapp --branch main

Configure in GitHub/Gitea:

• URL: https://<master>:6880/api/v1/webhooks/github
• Secret: your webhook secret
• Events: Push

On push to the matching branch, Orca automatically redeploys the service.

Managing Webhooks

orca webhooks              # List registered webhooks

TLS Certificates

Auto-TLS (ACME)

Set acme_email in cluster.toml and Orca handles Let’s Encrypt certificates automatically:

[cluster]
acme_email = "ops@example.com"

Custom Certificates

For BYO certs, place them in the configured cert directory and reference them in the service config.

Persistent State

Services survive server restarts:

• Deploy — config saved to redb store
• Stop — containers stopped, config retained
• Server restart — configs loaded, containers recreated automatically