Zero-Downtime Deployments: Strategies for Availability Keeping a service online while you push updates is essential for user trust and revenue. Zero-downtime deployments focus on preventing outages during release windows. The right mix of methods depends on your system, data model, and traffic, but a layered approach helps most teams.
Approaches to minimize downtime
Blue-green deployments: two identical environments exist side by side. You route traffic to the active one, deploy to the idle copy, run tests, then switch traffic in a moment. Rollback is quick if problems appear, but it doubles infrastructure for a time. Canary releases: roll out changes to a small user group first. Monitor errors, latency, and business impact before expanding. If issues show up, you stop the rollout with minimal user impact. Rolling updates: progressively update a portion of instances, then move to the next batch. This reduces risk and keeps most users on a stable version during the rollout. Feature flags: deploy the new behavior behind a flag and turn it on for a subset of users. If trouble arises, flip the flag off without redeploying. Database migrations: aim for backward-compatible changes. Add new columns or tables, populate data gradually, and switch reads to the new schema in stages. Keep old code working until the migration is complete. Health checks and load balancers: use readiness probes so only healthy instances receive traffic. A quick health signal helps you roll back automatically if something goes wrong. Operational practices
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