Hey guys, how are you today? In a previous article we talked a little about how CI and CD processes can make your software development process faster and more reliable. The improvement process of an application has evolved a lot and today we are going to talk about a model widely used in the development industry so that software updates have less impact and lack of availability in case of errors.
I remember that in the past the process of web software evolution was generally based on exchanging system files by FTP, often without the right to failures. Since backups were scarce and difficult to do.
Rollback? Staging environment? A/B test? Ish, no one even knew what that was most of the time. Then, if in the FTP process a wrong file was deleted “by accident”, despair took over the staff and sometimes the system was unavailable for hours or days. But it’s good that today you don’t use manual FTP to update systems anymore, don’t you? Right?
Today, we are going to talk about a deployment model called Canary Deployment or Canary Releases . This model was created with the idea that a new deploy should have as little negative impact as possible when it becomes available. That is, this deploy is available for a small portion of users.
Note: In Portuguese it would be something like “Implantação Canário” or “Lançamentos Canário”, but I preferred to keep the name in English. .
What is Canary Deployment?
Basically the canary deployment is a deployment model where releases are made partially. Primarily, a new release is made available to a small number of users so that these people can test the news and give feedback on what has changed. And, if these changes are stable and accepted by these people, the update is performed for the other people who use the system.
