Go from Zero to Hero with CI, CD and Canary Releases: Join the Fun and Revolutionize Your Workflow! was initially published on Sunday January 08 2023 on the Tech Dev Blog. For the latest up-to-date content, fresh out of the oven, visit https://techdevblog.io and subscribe to our newsletter!

Introduction

Continuous integration, continuous delivery, canary releases, and green/blue deployment are important concepts in the world of software development. These practices and strategies help teams to build, test, and release software updates efficiently and with confidence, minimizing the risk of issues and downtime. In this article, we will delve into the details of each concept and explore how they fit together to form a comprehensive software delivery process.

Continuous Integration

Continuous integration (CI) is a software development practice that requires developers to regularly merge their code changes into a central repository. This allows teams to detect and fix issues quickly, as every code change is built, tested, and checked for errors as soon as it is committed. In order to implement CI, teams need to have a central repository set up, as well as automated build and testing processes in place.

Continuous Delivery

Continuous delivery (CD) takes the concept of CI one step further by automatically building, testing, and releasing code changes to production. This requires a high level of automation and requires teams to have a robust CI process in place, as well as a reliable deployment process. With CD, teams can release software updates more frequently and with confidence, as the code has already been thoroughly tested in the CI process.

Canary Releases

Canary releases and green/blue deployments are strategies that can be used in conjunction with CI and CD to safely roll out code changes to users. To implement these strategies, teams need to have a way to selectively route traffic to different versions of their software, as well as automated monitoring and alert systems in place to quickly detect any issues. Additionally, automated rollback systems should be in place to easily revert changes if necessary.

A canary release involves releasing a small percentage of code changes to a subset of users, often referred to as a "canary group." This allows teams to test the changes in a real-world environment and ensure that there are no issues before releasing the changes to all users.

Green/blue deployement

Green/blue deployment involves maintaining two identical production environments, referred to as "green" and "blue." When code changes are ready to be released, they are first deployed to the "blue" environment. Once they have been thoroughly tested and any issues have been fixed, the traffic is then routed from the "green" environment to the "blue" environment, effectively releasing the code changes to all users. This requires the ability to quickly switch traffic between the two environments and the ability to easily roll back changes if needed.

Conclusion

By using these strategies in combination with CI and CD, teams can build, test, and release software updates efficiently and with confidence, ensuring that code changes are thoroughly tested and released to users in a safe and controlled manner. This helps to minimize the risk of issues and downtime, and allows teams to continuously deliver new features and updates to their users. By working together, these concepts form a comprehensive software delivery process that allows teams to effectively manage and release code changes.

Go from Zero to Hero with CI, CD and Canary Releases: Join the Fun and Revolutionize Your Workflow! was initially published on Sunday January 08 2023 on the Tech Dev Blog. For the latest up-to-date content, fresh out of the oven, visit https://techdevblog.io and subscribe to our newsletter!