Deployment Agents

Deployment agents run inside customer environments alongside vendor applications. They connect Distr to deployment targets and manage the full deployment lifecycle while requiring minimal access to customer infrastructure.

Note

Deployment agents are the key components that enable the Assisted Self-Managed Customer and BYOC use cases.

Distr provides two deployment agents:

• Docker Agent: manages Docker Compose deployments on any Linux host. Handles updates, environment variables, container health, and supports Docker Swarm mode.
• Kubernetes Agent: manages Helm chart deployments in Kubernetes clusters. Supports cluster- and namespace-scoped permissions, value overrides, and migration of existing releases.

BYOC does not need a third agent type. You ship the infrastructure as an ordinary Compose application, and the Docker agent deploys it onto a management VM in the customer’s cloud account.

Note

We are also working on a read-only version of the Distr agent that will monitor deployment status and report logs and metrics without being able to alter deployments.

Agent Section in the Vendor Portal

The Agents section of the Vendor Portal has two parts.

Applications

The Applications section is where you define your software offerings: Docker Compose files or Helm charts, environment variable templates, and application versions. This is the foundation for all deployments.

• Create an Application: set up Docker and Helm applications
• Create a Deployment: deploy applications to customer environments

Deployments

The Deployments section is the central health and management dashboard for all deployment targets. Use it to monitor real-time deployment status, view logs, and track state across all customer environments.

For status indicators, log collection, and metrics, see Logs & Metrics.

Deployment Target Menu

Each deployment target card has a ⋮ (vertical ellipsis) menu in its top-right corner:

• Edit: rename the target or change its configuration
• Update Agent: apply a pending agent version update (only shown when an update is available). See Agent Updates for details.
• Notes: add internal notes visible to your team
• Agent Logs: open the agent log viewer. See Logs & Metrics for details.
• Reconnect: generate a new connection command (only shown when the agent has connected at least once). See Reconnect for details.
• Delete: remove the deployment target

Agent Updates

Every deployment target runs a specific agent version, and each Distr instance ships the agent version that matches it. When a target is on an older version, the Update Agent action assigns it the version of that instance. The agent notices the change the next time it polls Distr and updates itself. Updating an agent does not restart the deployed application.

Agents can also update themselves without any interaction. When automatic agent updates are enabled for a target, Distr assigns it the current agent version on every start, so upgrading Distr updates those agents along with it. The option can be set per target when creating a deployment, in the target settings, and in the Update Agent dialog. It is enabled by default for new deployment targets and disabled for targets that existed before the option was introduced.