Blue Green Deployment

What is a blue-green deployment?

Blue-green deployment is a technique for releasing new software updates with minimal downtime and risk. It involves running two identical production environments, called “blue” and “green”, in parallel. 

The green environment is used to test and validate new software versions, while the blue environment continues to run the previous one. 

To release a new version of the software, the blue environment is taken offline and the green environment is brought online. This allows the new version to be tested in a live production environment before it is deployed to all users. 

However, if any issues are encountered during testing, the blue environment can be brought back online, while the issues in the green environment are fixed. 

Once the new version has been tested in the green environment and proven stable, it can be deployed to the blue environment and the process can be repeated for future releases. 

This approach enables fast and flexible deployment of software updates while minimizing the risk of downtime or other issues.

Blue-green deployment model – advantages

• It allows easy rollback to the previous version if there are problems with the new one,
• It minimizes downtime, because the change from one environment to another is usually quick and seamless,
• It allows for testing new version in a production-like environment before being made available to users,
• It enables for continuous deployment of new software versions.

Blue-green deployment process is often used in conjunction with automated deployment and testing tools, such as CI/CD pipelines, to make the new software testing and releasing more efficient and reliable.