Use a platform

An Internal Developer Platform (IDP) powered by the Platform Orchestrator removes Ops bottlenecks and enables true developer self-service. Developers can choose their preferred level of abstraction (i.e. how much context they want), their preferred interface (code based with Score, Portal, Platform Orchestrator CLI or API) and easily self-serve the tech and tools they need —- without waiting times. And platform teams can define conventions and golden paths once and focus on optimizing the IDP to your needs, instead of reinventing the wheel.

The Platform Orchestrator is a game-changer especially when paired with Score, our OSS workload specification that allows developers to describe their workloads and dependencies as code once—and run them across all environments. Together, Score and the Platform Orchestrator lower cognitive load, reduce lead time, increase deployment frequency, and drive developer satisfaction.

How it works

Score lets developers define the resources their workloads require ‌in a declarative way. The Score Specification can define one or more dependencies required by the Workload to run which could include other Workloads, third-party services, configurations, or resources like databases and volumes.

By adding a ‘score.yaml’ file to your Workloads’ repo, Score introduces a single change to your setup. Everything else stays as it is. Once set up, developers can continue using Score even if the underlying tech stack changes.

Using Score, developers describe how their apps fit together and define which resources they depend on. The Humanitec Platform Orchestrator then interprets what resources and configs are required for a Workload to run, creates app- and infrastructure configs based on rules defined by the platform team, and executes them.

How Humnitec Orchestrator works

To do this, the Platform Orchestrator follows what Humanitec call a Read, Match, Create, Deploy execution pattern:

  • Read: interpret workload specification and context.
  • Match: identify the correct configuration baselines to create the application. configurations and identify what resources to resolve or create based on the matching context.
  • Create: create application configurations; if necessary, create (infrastructure) resources, fetch credentials and inject credentials as secrets.
  • Deploy: deploy the workload into the target environment wired up to its dependencies.

Next steps

Follow these tutorials and learn how a platform built with Humanitec’s products enables developers to:

Build a platform