Buildkite Pipelines architecture
Buildkite Pipelines provides both a self-hosted and hosted architecture for its build environments.
Self-hosted (hybrid) architecture
A self-hosted architecture (also known as a hybrid architecture) separates the following aspects of Buildkite Pipelines' core functionality:
Buildkite Pipelines: A software-as-a-service (SaaS) control plane, consisting of the Buildkite Platform, as well as its Pipelines product component and interface for visualizing and managing CI/CD pipelines. Buildkite Pipelines coordinates work and displays results.
Agents: Small, reliable, and cross-platform build runners that constitute the build environment. In a self-hosted architecture, agents are hosted by you, either on-premises or in the cloud. Agents execute the work they receive from Pipelines.
In this type of hybrid architecture, Buildkite Pipelines runs the control plane (accessible through the main product interface) as a SaaS product, and you run the build environment on your own infrastructure. In other words, Pipelines handles the orchestration, and you bring the compute. That means you can fine-tune and secure the build environment to suit your particular use case and workflow.
The following diagram shows the split in Pipelines between its SaaS platform and the agents running on your infrastructure.
The diagram shows that Buildkite Pipelines provides a web interface, handles integrations with third-party tools, and offers APIs and webhooks. By design, sensitive data, such as source code and secrets, remain within your environment and are not seen by the Buildkite Platform. This decoupling provides flexibility and security as you maintain control over the build environment and agent scaling while Buildkite manages the coordination, scheduling, and web interface.
Compared to fully self-hosted solutions, where you run both the control plane and build environment on your own infrastructure, a hybrid architecture reduces the maintenance burden on your team. Unlike managed solutions, a hybrid architecture gives you full control over security within your build environment.
Learn more about how to set up this architecture in Install and run a self-hosted agent of the main Getting started tutorial.
Buildkite hosted architecture
Buildkite also provides a managed solution, offered through its Buildkite hosted agents feature, where both the control plane of Buildkite Pipelines and its build environment are provided and handled by Buildkite. This solution is useful when you need to get a build environment up and running quickly or you have limited resources to implement a hybrid architecture, or both.
Learn more about this feature in Buildkite hosted agents, and how to set up this architecture in Create a Buildkite hosted agent of the main Getting started tutorial.