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Zero Downtime Deployments in Kubernetes with Linkerd
Releasing applications into production always comes with a sense of nervousness, no matter how stable the application and automation have been in prior environments. The fear of causing unexpected disruptions for critical clients — and potentially driving them away — is a significant risk. As a result, many businesses still rely on manual, after-hours deployments, following long instruction pages that detail every manual step. While this may minimize the immediate business impact, it remains vulnerable to human error. Engineers can get distracted or miss a crucial step, and even a minor oversight can lead to significant issues — something automated procedures are designed to prevent.
On the other hand, some companies fully embrace the “fail-fast” approach. For example, Netflix runs its “Simian Army” in production environments to ensure everything is functioning as expected, with their little monkeys trying to break things. However, reaching this level of confidence requires organizational maturity, and it takes time to get there.
Modern production deployment strategies are evolving to address these challenges through automation, continuous delivery, and the use of advanced tools that implement deployment techniques such as blue-green deployments, canary releases, and progressive rollouts. These strategies not only reduce…