Configure code deploy mechanisms on Astronomer Software

Deploying code is the process of pushing code to an Astronomer Software Deployment. A code deploy can include an entire Astro project as a Docker image, or just the code in your Astro project dags directory. Astronomer Software supports a few different methods for deploying code to a Deployment. You can:

• Deploy project images or DAGs only using the Astro CLI. Deploying a project image is the only way to deploy Airflow-level configurations and dependencies to a Deployment.
• Deploy DAGs using an NFS volume.
• Deploy DAGs using Git sync.

Use this document to learn more about each available method and make a decision about which method is right for your use case.

Astro CLI deploys

By default, you can deploy code to an Airflow Deployment by building it into a Docker image and pushing that image to the Astronomer Registry via the CLI or API. This workflow is described in Deploy code via the CLI.

This mechanism builds your DAGs into a Docker image alongside all other files in your Astro project directory, including your Python and OS-level packages, your Dockerfile, and your plugins.

The resulting image is then used to generate a set of Docker containers for each of Airflow's core components. Every time you run astro deploy in the Astro CLI, your DAGs are rebuilt into a new Docker image and all Docker containers are restarted.

You can also enable DAG only deploys to deploy only your dags directory without building a Docker image. Note that you still need access to Docker to authenticate to Astronomer Software before you can deploy DAGs.

NFS volume-based DAG deploys

For advanced teams who deploy DAG changes more frequently, Astronomer also supports an NFS volume-based DAG deploy mechanism.

Using this mechanism, you can deploy DAGs to an Airflow Deployment on Astronomer by adding the corresponding Python files to a shared file system on your network. Compared to image-based deploys, NFS volume-based deploys limit downtime and enable continuous deployment.

To deploy DAGs to a Deployment via an NFS volume, you must first enable the feature at the platform level. For more information, read Deploy DAGs via NFS volume.

Git-sync DAG deploys

For teams using a Git-based workflow for DAG development, Astronomer supports a git-sync deploy mechanism.

To deploy DAGs via git-sync, you add DAGs to a repository that has been configured to sync with your Astronomer Deployment. After the Deployment detects a change in the repository, your DAG code automatically syncs to your Deployment with no downtime. For more information on configuring this feature, read Deploy DAGs via git sync.