The Art of Seamless Deployment: Blue Green Deployment Unveiled!

Are you tired of experiencing downtime and disruptions during software updates? Have you been looking for a deployment strategy that minimizes the risk of failures and ensures a smooth release? Please read our blog carefully if your answer is yes. Maintaining and deploying to two identical production environments (blue and green) with only one active environment is known as blue green deployment. This strategy enables you to switch between the two environments without causing any disruptions to your users during updates.

This blog will serve as a comprehensive guide to blue green deployment and the steps involved. We’ll also discuss how blue green deployments compare to canary deployments regarding their advantages and disadvantages. We’ll also explore the difficulties of implementing blue green deployments in Kubernetes.

By the end of this blog, you’ll better understand blue green deployments and how they can assist you in achieving a more dependable and seamless software release process. More importantly, the best ways to execute it. 

What is Blue Green Deployment?

You’re a software developer creating a new feature for a well-known program that millions use. The new functionality has you excited, but you’re also concerned about how it will work in practice.

The use of blue green deployment is then necessary. Blue green deployment involves building two identical environments: the “blue” environment and the “green” environment. The green environment is the new one that is getting ready for deployment, while the blue environment is the one that is in use right now.

A blue green deployment routes production traffic to the blue environment while setting up and testing the green environment. Traffic is diverted from the blue environment to the green environment once it has been prepared and tested, making the green environment the new production environment. In preparation for the following deployment, the blue environment then changes into the new staging environment.

Imagine it as a security net for your code. You can test your new feature using blue green deployment, which uses a parallel version of your current application as the “blue” environment. This enables you to fix any bugs or problems before the feature is made available.

When you’re sure the new feature is ready for use, you can switch to the “green” environment, the updated version of your application that includes the new feature. Your users won’t encounter interruptions or downtime due to the feature rollout.

Therefore, the blue green deployment technique enables you to confidently release your code, knowing any problems can be quickly fixed without impairing the user experience. If something goes wrong, it’s like having a backup plan.

Benefits

The following are some of the benefits of blue green deployment¹:

1. Reduced downtime: Blue green deployment allows you to seamlessly switch traffic between the old and new environments, cutting down on deployment downtime.

2. Minimal risk: By allowing you to test the new environment before switching traffic, blue green deployment lowers the possibility of issues in the production environment.

3. Increased dependability: You can guarantee the high availability and reliability of your application by keeping the old environment operational in the event that the new one fails.

4. Simple rollback: You can quickly switch traffic to the old environment if issues arise in the new environment, ensuring a quick and simple rollback.

5. Faster releases: By streamlining the deployment process and reducing risk, blue green deployment enables you to roll out new features and updates more quickly.

6. Better scalability: Blue green deployment enables you to scale your application horizontally by adding more instances of the new environment to accommodate growing traffic. This increases scalability.
7. Improved customer experience: Reduced downtime and increased reliability can guarantee a better customer experience, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Blue green deployment is a powerful technique that can assist you in releasing software more quickly, reliably, and with little risk, improving customer satisfaction and boosting business value.

Limitations

• Duplicate infrastructure is needed for blue green deployment, which can be expensive and resource-intensive.
• Since it can be challenging to keep the data synchronized between the two environments, it might not be appropriate for applications that require a lot of persistent data.
• Blue green deployment might not be the best option for small projects or teams with few resources because it can be challenging and time-consuming to set up initially.
• Applications that rely on intricate network configurations or have numerous external dependencies might not function well with them.
• The rollback procedure can be challenging, notably if the database schema has been altered or intricate dependencies exist between various application components.
• Blue green deployment is not a panacea and may not be appropriate in all situations, so it is crucial to determine whether it is the best strategy for your particular use case.

Blue Green Vs. Canary deployments

• Canary Deployment uses a single production environment, whereas Blue Green Deployment uses two identical production environments.
• Canary Deployment increases the percentage of users who receive the changes gradually, whereas Blue Green Deployment switches all traffic simultaneously.
• Canary Deployment is a more gradual and controlled method of deploying changes, whereas Blue Green Deployment offers a complete switch-over and switch-back mechanism.
• Canary deployment is better for smaller applications where downtime is not a concern, and the changes can be tested more thoroughly. blue green deployment is better suited for larger applications where the downtime for switching production environments is not acceptable.

Executing Blue Green deployments in Kubernetes and its challenges

In this deployment strategy, you will have two identical environments—one blue and one green. While the new version of your application with the latest feature will be deployed in the green environment, the current version will be running in the blue environment. While the green environment is only accessible for testing, the blue environment still handles traffic.

Managing the traffic is currently the most challenging aspect of blue green deployments in Kubernetes. You must ensure that the traffic is directed to the appropriate location without causing your users any inconvenience or downtime. Utilizing Kubernetes Service objects and labels to control traffic routing will help you achieve this.

Controlling your application’s state during the deployment process presents another difficulty. The data must be consistent between the blue and green environments, so make sure of that. Use Kubernetes StatefulSets or Persistent Volumes to maintain the data state to find a solution.

Finally, you must ensure that the deployment procedure is repeatable and automated. By doing this, you can prevent human error and guarantee that the deployment procedure is always consistent.

Consequently, carrying out blue green deployments in Kubernetes can be difficult. Still, with the appropriate strategy and tools, you can guarantee that your users encounter no disruption or downtime during deployment.

Blue Green Deployments on Ozone

Unlike traditional platforms, to configure blue green deployments, there’s no need to code your pipelines or parameters on Ozone. The platform ships with 100+ preloaded task templates for every significant phase of a CI/CD process, including deployment strategies. 

There is a customizable task template available for a blue green deployment. All you need to do is drag and drop the task as part of your pipeline and save the pipeline template. 

This allows you to master blue green deployments without having to deal with coding or tackling deployment failures, as you can associate every CI/CD pipeline on Ozone with an automated rollback pipeline should things go south. 

Ozone is the ideal partner to assist you in implementing blue green Deployment, a revolutionary method of software deployment. By selecting our services, you’ll gain access to our team’s knowledge of the most recent deployment strategies and our dedication to offering first-rate customer service. With our assistance, you can lessen downtime, increase the dependability of your software, and make sure that adding new features goes without a hitch.

So why wait? Take advantage of the benefits of blue green Deployment today and partner with Ozone to achieve outstanding success.  Contact us now to get started!