Welcome to Orchestra Platform

Orchestra Platform is a cloud-native, Kubernetes-based learning environment designed specifically for bioinformatics and data science education. It provides instructors and students with on-demand, isolated workshop environments that can be quickly provisioned and automatically managed.

Orchestra Platform enables educational institutions, research organizations, and training companies to deliver hands-on bioinformatics and data science workshops without the complexity of manual infrastructure management. Each workshop runs in its own isolated environment with dedicated resources, ensuring a consistent and reliable learning experience.

Key Features

🚀 Instant Workshop Creation

• Create fully configured workshop environments in minutes
• Support for popular bioinformatics tools (RStudio, Jupyter, etc.)
• Automated resource provisioning and cleanup

🔒 Secure & Isolated

• Each workshop runs in its own Kubernetes namespace
• Network isolation between workshop instances
• Secure access via unique subdomains and HTTPS

⏰ Time-Limited Sessions

• Configurable workshop duration (hours to days)
• Automatic cleanup when sessions expire
• Resource management and cost control

🎯 User-Friendly Interface

• Simple web dashboard for workshop management
• Real-time status monitoring
• Easy sharing of workshop URLs

📚 Flexible Content

• Support for custom Docker images
• Persistent storage for workshop data
• Pre-configured environments for common workflows

Use Cases

Educational Institutions

• Bioinformatics courses and workshops
• Computational biology training
• Data science bootcamps
• Research method courses

Research Organizations

• Training workshops for new tools
• Collaborative analysis sessions
• Reproducible research environments
• Method development and testing

Industry Training

• Professional development workshops
• Customer training sessions
• Product demonstrations
• Certification programs

Architecture Overview

Orchestra Platform consists of four main components:

1. Orchestra Operator - Kubernetes operator managing workshop lifecycle
2. Orchestra API - REST API for workshop operations
3. Orchestra Frontend - Web application for users
4. Orchestra Docs - Comprehensive documentation (this site)

Each workshop gets its own unique subdomain and runs in complete isolation from other workshops.

Getting Started

Ready to start using Orchestra Platform? Check out our Installation Guide to set up your own instance, or jump to the User Guide to learn how to create your first workshop.

Community and Support

Orchestra Platform is open source and welcomes contributions from the community. Visit our GitHub repository to:

• Report issues or request features
• Contribute code improvements
• Join discussions about the platform
• Access the latest development updates

For questions and support, please check our documentation or open an issue on GitHub.

Orchestra is a cloud-native platform for managing self-service RStudio workshops on Kubernetes.

Project Structure

This monorepo contains all the components of the Orchestra platform:

• docs/: Documentation website powered by Starlight/Astro.
• frontend/: React (TypeScript) dashboard for managing workshops.
• operator/: Kubernetes operator (Python/Kopf) that manages workshop lifecycles.
• server/: FastAPI backend that provides the API for the frontend and interacts with Kubernetes.

Local Development

Prerequisites

• Docker Desktop with Kubernetes enabled
• kubectl
• Helm (brew install helm)
• just (brew install just)
• uv (brew install uv)
• Node.js 20+ (brew install node)

First-time cluster setup

Run once per machine to install Traefik and the Orchestra CRDs into your local cluster:

just dev-setup

This will:

1. Switch kubectl context to docker-desktop
2. Install Traefik as the ingress controller (exposed on port 30080)
3. Apply the Workshop CRD

Installing dependencies

just setup

This installs frontend/docs packages and syncs Python projects with their dev dependency groups, so commands like just test work without extra setup.

Starting the dev stack

just dev

This starts the server, frontend, and operator in parallel as local processes (with hot-reload):

Component	URL
Frontend	http://localhost:3000
API	http://localhost:8080
API docs	http://localhost:8080/docs
Docs site	run just dev-docs separately

Note: Ports 8000 and 8001 are occupied by Docker Desktop on Mac; 8080 is used instead.

Workshops created via the UI will be reachable at http://<name>.127.0.0.1.nip.io:30080. No DNS configuration required — *.127.0.0.1.nip.io resolves to 127.0.0.1 automatically via the public nip.io service.

Development without the operator

If you're working on the API or frontend only and don't need workshops to actually reconcile:

just dev-stack   # server + frontend only

Config files

just dev-setup copies these automatically on first run:

server/.env.example    → server/.env           # API settings (gitignored)
frontend/.env.local.example → frontend/.env.local  # VITE_API_URL etc (gitignored)

Edit them as needed after copying.

Getting Started

Refer to the README.md in each subdirectory for component-specific instructions.