Octopus in a nutshell

A Brief History of Octopus

Back in 2011, a developer named Paul Stovell got fed up with the nightmare of deploying applications manually.

He figured, “Hey, why not make a tool that automates this mess?” And thus, Octopus Deploy was born.

Motivation: Why Octopus?

Before Octopus, deployment felt like:

• SSHing into servers and praying nothing breaks
• Copy-pasting config files like a caveman
• Manually running SQL scripts and hoping they don’t nuke the database

Octopus Deploy came along and said, “Enough!” It introduced a smarter way:

✅ Automated deployments – No more 3 AM deployment calls!
✅ Rollback support – Because mistakes happen.
✅ Multi-environment support – Dev, Test, Prod? All handled!
✅ Permissions & security – Stop giving your intern access to production.
✅ Integration with everything – Azure, AWS, Kubernetes, and more.

Octopus vs. The Competition

So how does it stack up against the big names like Jenkins, GitHub Actions, and Azure DevOps? Let’s break it down:

Code Examples: Deploy Like a Pro

1. Create a New Deployment Project

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octo create-project --project "My Awesome App" --server "https://octopus.example.com" --apiKey "API-KEY"

2. Deploy a Release

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octo deploy-release --project "My Awesome App" --releaseNumber "1.2.3" --deployTo "Production"

3. Create a New Release

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octo create-release --project "My Awesome App" --version "1.2.3" --packageVersion "1.2.3"

4. List Available Environments

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octo list-environments --server "https://octopus.example.com" --apiKey "API-KEY"

5. Push a Package to Octopus

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octo push --package "MyApp.1.2.3.nupkg" --server "https://octopus.example.com" --apiKey "API-KEY"

6. View Deployment Logs

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octo get-deployment --deploymentId "DEPLOYMENT-ID"

7. Promote a Release

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octo promote-release --project "My Awesome App" --from "Staging" --to "Production"

8. Cancel a Deployment

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octo cancel-deployment --deploymentId "DEPLOYMENT-ID"

9. List All Projects

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octo list-projects --server "https://octopus.example.com" --apiKey "API-KEY"

10. View Deployment Progress

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octo get-tasklog --taskId "TASK-ID"

Key Takeaways

References

• https://octopus.com/
• https://octopus.com/docs
• https://github.com/OctopusDeploy