Change Management

Clotho

Enterprise change management for Kubernetes. Approval workflows, scheduled deployments, and complete audit trails. Built natively for OpenShift.

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Clotho wireframe
01

Overview

Clotho brings enterprise-grade change management practices to OpenShift environments. Organizations running production workloads need controlled change processes; approval workflows, risk assessment, scheduled maintenance windows, and complete audit trails. Clotho implements these controls as native Kubernetes resources, integrating seamlessly with existing GitOps pipelines and cluster operations.

The operator intercepts resource creation in managed namespaces, routing changes through configurable approval workflows before they reach the cluster. With risk-based auto-approval, multi-step approval gates, tamper-proof signatures, and S3 archival, Clotho provides the governance infrastructure that enterprises require for compliance, security, and operational safety—without sacrificing the velocity that Kubernetes enables.

02

Features

Multi-Step Approval Workflows

Define sequential approval gates requiring sign-off from multiple teams, such as platform, security, and operations. Each step can have its own approver set, timeout, and escalation rules. All decisions are recorded with timestamps, user attribution, and justification.

Risk-Based Auto-Approval

Not every change needs a full review. Emergency changes auto-approve for rapid incident response. Standard and low-risk changes can be automatically approved. Normal and high-risk changes route through full workflows. Configure the matrix to match your organization's risk tolerance.

Scheduled Deployments

Approve changes now, deploy them later. Set planned start and end times for maintenance windows. Changes automatically transition from Scheduled to Implementing when the window opens, and expire if the window closes without completion—preventing stale changes from deploying unexpectedly.

Tamper Detection

Every approved resource receives HMAC-SHA256 signatures stored as annotations. Subsequent modifications are validated against these signatures. Unauthorized changes are blocked by the admission webhook. Approved updates can bypass re-approval when signatures match, preventing approval fatigue.

Compliance Archival

Approved manifests are automatically archived to S3-compatible storage (AWS S3, MinIO, etc.) before deployment. Combined with the complete audit trail of approvals and decisions, this provides the evidence chain that auditors and compliance teams require.

OpenShift Console Integration

A native console plugin provides real-time visibility into change requests, approval workflows, and scheduled deployments. Approvers can review manifest diffs, approve or deny directly from the UI, and track the complete lifecycle of every change through an intuitive timeline view.

03

Use Cases

04

Custom Resources

05

Example Workflow

Here's a typical workflow for deploying a new microservice through Clotho. The change is created with a scheduled time window, routed through a multi-step approval workflow, and automatically deployed when the maintenance window opens. 

# 1. Create a Change with scheduled deployment window
  oc apply -f - <<EOF
  apiVersion: clotho.cosmosdevops.co.uk/v1alpha1
  kind: Change
  metadata:
    name: deploy-payment-service-v2
    namespace: production
  spec:
    description: "Deploy payment service v2 with new fraud detection"
    category: Normal
    riskLevel: High
    plannedStartTime: "2025-12-15T02:00:00Z"
    plannedEndTime: "2025-12-15T04:00:00Z"
    manifestRequests:
      - name: payment-service-deployment
  EOF

  # 2. Platform team approves via ApprovalEvent
  oc apply -f - <<EOF
  apiVersion: clotho.cosmosdevops.co.uk/v1alpha1
  kind: ApprovalEvent
  metadata:
    name: platform-approval-payment
    namespace: production
  spec:
    targetStep: platform-review
    decision: approve
    comment: "Reviewed resource requests and replica count. LGTM."
  EOF

  # 3. Security team approves
  oc apply -f - <<EOF
  apiVersion: clotho.cosmosdevops.co.uk/v1alpha1
  kind: ApprovalEvent
  metadata:
    name: security-approval-payment
    namespace: production
  spec:
    targetStep: security-review
    decision: approve
    comment: "Container image scanned, no CVEs. Approved."
  EOF

  # 4. Monitor the change status (auto-deploys at plannedStartTime)
  oc get change deploy-payment-service-v2 -n production -w

Bring Enterprise Change Management to Your Cluster

Stop deploying blind. Clotho gives you the approval workflows, audit trails, and scheduled deployments that enterprise operations require; without leaving the OpenShift ecosystem.

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