Full-stack application deployment is the process of making software applications available to end-users by moving code from development environments to production infrastructure. It encompasses everything from build automation and container orchestration to monitoring, security, and rollback strategies. In modern cloud-native architectures, deployment is no longer a one-time event but a continuous, automated process that must balance speed, reliability, and cost-efficiency. A critical mindset shift: every deployment decision affects availability, performance, and operational overhead — making deployment strategy as important as the code itself.
What This Cheat Sheet Covers
This topic spans 25 focused tables and 201 indexed concepts. Below is a complete table-by-table outline of this topic, spanning foundational concepts through advanced details.
Table 1: Deployment Strategies
| Strategy | Example | Description |
|---|---|---|
Two identical environments (blue and green); switch traffic instantly between them | • Maintains two complete production environments, enabling instant rollback by switching load balancer routing • zero downtime but doubles infrastructure costs. | |
Route 10% of traffic to new version, monitor metrics, then gradually increase | • Releases updates to a small subset of users first, catching issues early with limited blast radius • allows data-driven rollout decisions based on real user feedback. | |
Update pods/instances one at a time: kubectl set image deployment/app app=v2Gradually replaces old with new | • Incrementally updates instances without downtime • minimal resource overhead but slower rollout and potential version inconsistency during transition. | |
Deploy code with features disabled, enable via runtime flags | • Decouples deployment from release, allowing instant feature activation or deactivation without redeployment • enables targeted rollouts and A/B testing. |