What Orbit is
Orbit is a platform you install on your own servers. It turns a fresh Linux machine into a place to run applications and databases, and gives you a console to do it without writing Kubernetes manifests or shell scripts.
What runs where
- The main server: where you run the installer. It holds Orbit's control plane (the API, the console and its own database), Kubernetes (K3s), the Traefik router that receives your traffic, cert-manager for Let's Encrypt certificates, and BuildKit, which builds your repositories.
- More servers: you can add servers from the console. They join the same cluster and run the services you place on them.
- Your applications and databases: they run as Kubernetes workloads. They keep serving traffic while Orbit itself restarts or updates.
How Orbit works with you
- Every change is an operation. Deploying, restoring, resizing or updating runs as an operation with steps, a log and a clear result. If Orbit restarts in the middle, the operation resumes or fails with the reason.
- Previews before changes. Changing resources, replicas or a database's runtime first shows what it reserves on each server, how it rolls out and what to watch out for. A change that does not fit is blocked.
- What you see is what was observed. Statuses come from the servers' agents and Kubernetes. When Orbit has not heard from a server for a while, it says so instead of showing an old status.
- Limits are stated. Each screen says what a feature does not cover. What Orbit does not promise lists them in one place.
Where to start
- Install Orbit on a server.
- Create a project and deploy an application from GitHub or an image.
- Add a database and set its backups.
- Read Running Orbit and Updates before you depend on it.