Deployability

Orion ships as a single binary with embedded migrations, sensible defaults, and multiple installation methods. No runtime dependencies. You’re up and running immediately.

Packaging

Orion compiles into a single binary (orion-server) with everything built in:

• All three database backends (SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL) with embedded migrations
• Kafka producer and consumer
• OpenTelemetry trace export
• TLS termination
• Swagger UI at /docs

No feature flags, no plugins, no shared libraries to manage. The binary auto-detects the database backend from the URL scheme at startup.

With the default SQLite backend, there are zero external dependencies.

Containerization

Orion uses a multi-stage Docker build for minimal image size:

docker build -t orion .

The Dockerfile uses rust:1.93-slim for building and debian:trixie-slim for the runtime image. Key characteristics:

• Non-root execution: the container runs as a non-root user
• Built-in health probes: /healthz (liveness) and /readyz (readiness) are available without additional configuration

Docker with SQLite persistence: SQLite stores data in a local file. Without a persistent volume, data is lost when the container restarts:

docker run -p 8080:8080 \
  -v orion-data:/app/data \
  -e ORION_STORAGE__URL=sqlite:/app/data/orion.db \
  orion

With Docker Compose:

services:
  orion:
    image: orion
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    environment:
      ORION_STORAGE__URL: sqlite:/app/data/orion.db
    volumes:
      - orion-data:/app/data

volumes:
  orion-data:

For production, PostgreSQL or MySQL is recommended. Point ORION_STORAGE__URL to your database server.

Configuration

All settings have sensible defaults. You can run Orion with no config file at all. orion-server just works.

TOML config file: pass with -c:

orion-server -c config.toml

Environment variable overrides: use double-underscore nesting to override any setting:

ORION_SERVER__PORT=9090
ORION_STORAGE__URL="postgres://user:pass@localhost/orion"
ORION_KAFKA__ENABLED=true
ORION_LOGGING__FORMAT=json
ORION_ADMIN_AUTH__ENABLED=true
ORION_ADMIN_AUTH__API_KEY="your-secret-key"

Environment variables take precedence over the config file, making it easy to customize per environment without changing files.

Runtime configuration: channels carry their own runtime config (rate limits, timeouts, CORS, validation) via config_json, changeable through the admin API without restarts.

Distribution

Orion is available through multiple installation methods:

Homebrew (macOS and Linux):

brew install GoPlasmatic/tap/orion-server

Shell installer (Linux/macOS):

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/GoPlasmatic/Orion/releases/latest/download/orion-server-installer.sh | sh

PowerShell installer (Windows):

powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://github.com/GoPlasmatic/Orion/releases/latest/download/orion-server-installer.ps1 | iex"

Docker:

docker run -p 8080:8080 ghcr.io/goplasmatic/orion:latest

From source:

cargo install --git https://github.com/GoPlasmatic/Orion

Multi-platform binaries are published for Linux (x86_64, aarch64), macOS (x86_64, aarch64), and Windows (x86_64).