Rolling deployment vs. progressive delivery: Choosing a deployment strategy
Rolling deployment is a deployment strategy where updates are gradually rolled out to different subsets of users or servers to minimize risk and ensure a smooth transition. Progressive delivery is an approach that involves gradually exposing new features or updates to users in a controlled manner to gather feedback and monitor performance. Both rolling deployment and progressive delivery aim to reduce the impact of potential issues by incrementally releasing changes, but rolling deployment focuses more on the technical aspect of deployment while progressive delivery emphasizes user experience and feedback.
About the rolling deployment strategy
Rolling deployment is a software deployment strategy where new code is gradually rolled out to a subset of servers or instances in a staggered manner, reducing the risk of downtime or errors affecting all users at once. This approach allows for continuous delivery of updates and features to users while minimizing disruptions to the overall system.
By deploying changes incrementally, rolling deployment enables teams to monitor the impact of new code in real-time and quickly address any issues that arise, ensuring a smoother and more reliable deployment process. This strategy is particularly useful for large-scale applications or services that need to maintain high availability and performance levels during updates.
Advantages of the rolling deployment strategy
- Minimizes downtime: Rolling deployment allows for updates to be implemented gradually across different parts of the system, reducing the overall downtime experienced by users.
- Easy rollback: If an issue arises during the deployment process, it is easier to rollback changes in a rolling deployment compared to a full deployment, as only a portion of the system is affected.
Disadvantages of the rolling deployment strategy
- Complexity: Rolling deployment can be more complex to manage compared to a full deployment, as it requires careful coordination and monitoring of multiple instances running different versions of the software.
- Increased risk of errors: With multiple instances being updated simultaneously, there is a higher risk of errors or inconsistencies occurring during the deployment process.
About the progressive delivery deployment strategy
Progressive delivery is a deployment strategy in software development that involves gradually rolling out new features or updates to a small subset of users before making them available to everyone. This allows developers to test the changes in a real-world environment and gather feedback before fully releasing them.
By using progressive delivery, developers can mitigate the risk of introducing bugs or issues that could impact all users at once. It also allows for more controlled and efficient deployment of updates, ensuring a smoother transition for users and minimizing disruption to the overall system.
Advantages of the progressive delivery deployment strategy
- Allows for gradual release of new features to a subset of users, reducing the impact of potential bugs or issues.
- Enables teams to gather feedback from real users in a controlled environment before rolling out changes to the entire user base.
Disadvantages of the progressive delivery deployment strategy
- Requires additional planning and coordination to manage different stages of deployment.
- May result in increased complexity in the deployment process, especially for larger projects with multiple features being released simultaneously.
Choosing between rolling deployment and progressive delivery strategies
| Rolling Deployment | Progressive Delivery | |
|---|---|---|
| Reliability | Changes are gradually rolled out to reduce the impact of any potential issues. | Features are released to a small subset of users to monitor for any issues before full deployment. |
| Cost | Requires more resources to maintain multiple versions during the deployment process. | Allows for cost-effective testing and monitoring of new features before full release. |
| Complexity | Involves a simpler deployment process as changes are continuously rolled out. | Requires more intricate setup to manage feature flags and monitoring of different user groups. |
| Speed | Allows for quicker deployment of changes as they are rolled out continuously. | May result in a slower overall deployment process due to the testing and monitoring of features. |
The Unleash approach to feature flags
Feature flags enable development teams to manage features in a dynamic, flexible, and controlled manner.
Unleash is a secure, enterprise feature management platform available as open source or as monthly service. Choose your preferred deployment and get started in minutes.
