Airship

Airship is an open infrastructure lifecycle management platform that uses declarative, YAML-based documents to manage Kubernetes and underlying cloud infrastructure through a unified, automated workflow (infrastructure automation / cloud-native operations).

• Declarative management of infrastructure and Kubernetes clusters using version-controlled YAML documents (infrastructure-as-code).
• End-to-end lifecycle management for provisioning, updating, and operating cloud infrastructure and workloads (infrastructure lifecycle management).
• Use of Kubernetes as the substrate for control and orchestration of infrastructure resources and software delivery (container orchestration).
• Support for repeatable, site-based deployments across multiple environments with consistent configuration and workflows (multi-site deployment management).
• Integration with OpenStack and other cloud-native components for building and operating open infrastructure platforms (cloud infrastructure platform operations).

More About Airship

Airship is an open infrastructure project under the OpenInfra Foundation that focuses on automating the lifecycle of cloud infrastructure using declarative documents and Kubernetes as the orchestration substrate (infrastructure automation / cloud-native operations). It addresses the problem of deploying and operating complex open infrastructure stacks, including Kubernetes and OpenStack, in a repeatable and controlled manner across multiple sites.

The project centers on the principle that every aspect of infrastructure and platform configuration is expressed as YAML documents stored in version control (infrastructure-as-code). These documents define the desired state of bare metal resources, networking, Kubernetes clusters, and higher-level services. Airship components then consume these documents to realize, update, and maintain that desired state, enabling reproducible deployments and controlled change management.

Airship uses Kubernetes (container orchestration) as the underlying platform for running its control components and for orchestrating deployment workflows. The system treats a deployment as a collection of sites, each represented by a set of declarative documents. Operators can promote changes through a pipeline by updating documents and applying them through Airship, rather than performing ad hoc configuration changes.

Within enterprise and service provider environments, Airship is used to deploy and manage open infrastructure platforms, often including OpenStack (cloud infrastructure platform) on top of Kubernetes. It supports initial provisioning of bare metal nodes, installation and configuration of Kubernetes clusters, deployment of platform services, and ongoing upgrades and maintenance (infrastructure lifecycle management). The document-driven model allows organizations to align infrastructure operations with software delivery practices such as code review, change control, and Continuous Integration (CI).

Airship’s architecture includes specialized components that handle document aggregation, workflow execution, and interaction with underlying provisioning and orchestration systems, though the public materials emphasize the overall pattern rather than individual internal modules. The project integrates with established open infrastructure technologies under the OpenInfra Foundation, positioning it within the ecosystem of open cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes-based platforms, and OpenStack deployments.

For enterprise technical teams, Airship provides a framework to manage multi-site, multi-cluster environments using a single, consistent declarative interface (multi-site deployment management). It fits into categories such as Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC), Kubernetes-based platform operations, and open cloud infrastructure deployment tooling, and is suited for organizations that require repeatable deployment pipelines and controlled lifecycle management for large-scale open infrastructure environments.