Deployment Strategies

Master deployment strategies for AI agents including staging, canary releases, and rollback procedures

Rollout Strategies

Never deploy to 100% of users at once. Use gradual rollouts: canary releases (1%→5%→10%→25%→50%→100%) or blue-green deployments (instant 0%→100% switch with quick rollback). Monitor metrics at each step. If errors spike, stop and rollback. Gradual rollouts limit blast radius.

Interactive: Rollout Strategy Simulator

Compare canary and blue-green deployment strategies:

Canary: Gradual rollout from 1% to 100%
Minimize risk by exposing new version to increasing user percentages
Rollout Progress
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Strategy Comparison

🐤 Canary Release
  • • Gradual: 1%→5%→10%→25%→50%→100%
  • • Low risk (small blast radius)
  • • Slow rollout (hours to days)
  • • Monitor at each step
🔵🟢 Blue-Green
  • • Instant: 0%→100% switch
  • • Quick rollback (flip traffic back)
  • • Fast rollout (minutes)
  • • Requires 2x infrastructure
💡
When to Stop and Rollback

Set rollout gates: "If error rate >0.5% or latency >2x baseline, stop rollout immediately." Monitor continuously during rollout. At 5% traffic, a spike in errors affects 500 users. At 100%, it affects 10,000. Pause, investigate, fix, or rollback. Better to delay deployment than harm users.

Staging & Testing