Introduction
Before the introduction of this great improvement called Blue-Green Deployment in the SAP Commerce Cloud, customers would typically test everything in their staging environment and then, when they felt comfortable and ready, they would likely move their changes directly to the Production environment. Even when everything looks fine at the staging level, however, issues can arise in the Production environment, due to differing data in the Production database, configurations only set in the Production environment, and downtimes - disturbing the customer experience, damaging your site reputation and all of which may result in lost revenue for the business.
Luckily, there is now a way to safeguard your deployments and prevent some of these issues: the Blue-Green approach. Blue-Green deployment is a technique used to release software updates with zero downtime and minimal risk. In Blue-Green deployment, two identical environments are set up: one is the "blue" environment, which is currently in use (live system), and the other is the "green" environment, which is the updated version (deployment candidate). Once the green environment is ready, traffic is redirected from the blue environment to the green environment. If any issues occur during deployment, traffic can be quickly redirected back to the blue environment.
As introduced as part of SAP Commerce Cloud version 2211, the Blue-Green deployment is particularly useful for SAP Commerce because it allows updates to be made without disrupting the customer experience, safeguarding, and gaining significant time while managing your build deployments.
So now that you have been introduced to the value of the Blue-Green deployment, allow us to convey some key benefits and points to consider to leverage your understanding of this matter.
Key benefits of the Blue-Green approach:
Key points to be taken into consideration:
Deep dive into the Cloud Portal – Blue/Green deployment feature
How does this feature work? Let's simulate it and get some hints.
The user managing the builds would then create the endpoint, selecting the name, domain, service and its version, SSL certification, and if required, Proxy timeout. After that, he/she will then set the filtering, static files, and caching. Below, you can see the basic configuration as well as the field definition to guide you further:
With that configured and then the build deployment is targeted, the user managing this part will work on the deploy Build, which offers the option – Blue /Green as part of the deployment mode:
And after that, while visualizing the environment the user would be able to see the blue and green deployments:
And when the user navigates through the deployment history, it would be shown the overview of the deployment according to the relevant steps in a wizard and intuitive view – Blue deployment, Green Deployment, Deployment Preview, and Deployment Decision:
1-Blue Deployment: The Blue deployment represents the current active deployment serving the live traffic. During a green deployment, the blue one remains unchanged. If a final decision is made to accept the green deployment it will become the new blue deployment. Hence, the blue there is not part of the deployment itself, it rather gives all the relevant information in the same view of the blue-green deployment in place.
2-Green Deployment: The Green deployment represents the next deployment under evaluation. It uses the same backend database and search infrastructure as the blue deployment but typically is running a different version of your code. It is here where the green deployment update will be placed.
3-Deployment Preview: Once a green deployment reaches status deployed, the preview endpoints are used to access your application and perform the final quality check/assurance. A limited number of replicas are created for the preview phase. So, you will be able to see here the endpoints configured before and it is here you will be able to perform your tests, review and even monitor the whole environment in Dynatrace for SAP Commerce Cloud. Basically, this is the exact time to conduct the sanity check of your deployment.
4-Deployment Decision: Once the application has been previewed by your team as stated in step 3, the deployment decision will then be taken. An “accept” decision will promote the green build to become the new blue deployment serving live traffic. Whereas a “reject” decision discards the green deployment and leaves the existing blue deployment in place. You will be also able, for instance, in case you reject the deployment inform the reason of your decision for auditing purposes.
*Guidance is taken from the Commerce Cloud Platform - Deployment wizard
Blue-Green Documentation and Roadmap
For more information about Deploying a blue/green deployment, please refer here - Deploying a Green Preview Build and here is the collection of frequently asked questions about the Blue Green feature - Blue-Green FAQ
Please Review the roadmap of the blue/green deployment feature here – the Canary deployment feature is also coming!
Conclusion / Summary
And that is it! We have covered the key benefits, points to take into consideration, and cloud portal steps simulating a blue/green deployment and we hope you are now more familiar with this long-awaited feature. Thank you.
We hope you have enjoyed the reading,
Best Regard,
SAP CX Intelligent Adoption & Consumption Team
Before the introduction of this great improvement called Blue-Green Deployment in the SAP Commerce Cloud, customers would typically test everything in their staging environment and then, when they felt comfortable and ready, they would likely move their changes directly to the Production environment. Even when everything looks fine at the staging level, however, issues can arise in the Production environment, due to differing data in the Production database, configurations only set in the Production environment, and downtimes - disturbing the customer experience, damaging your site reputation and all of which may result in lost revenue for the business.
Luckily, there is now a way to safeguard your deployments and prevent some of these issues: the Blue-Green approach. Blue-Green deployment is a technique used to release software updates with zero downtime and minimal risk. In Blue-Green deployment, two identical environments are set up: one is the "blue" environment, which is currently in use (live system), and the other is the "green" environment, which is the updated version (deployment candidate). Once the green environment is ready, traffic is redirected from the blue environment to the green environment. If any issues occur during deployment, traffic can be quickly redirected back to the blue environment.
As introduced as part of SAP Commerce Cloud version 2211, the Blue-Green deployment is particularly useful for SAP Commerce because it allows updates to be made without disrupting the customer experience, safeguarding, and gaining significant time while managing your build deployments.
So now that you have been introduced to the value of the Blue-Green deployment, allow us to convey some key benefits and points to consider to leverage your understanding of this matter.
Key benefits of the Blue-Green approach:
- By testing the new release on the staging or production database, you can increase your confidence in deploying complex improvements, features, and significant updates.
- Minimize the chances of lost sales during critical sales periods by reducing the risks associated with updates
- Decrease the probability of expensive rollbacks between Test and Production data or configurations by reducing them.
- Deploying a replica of the production or staging environment can minimize the risk of complex releases.
- Simplify operations by leveraging automated traffic routing from the old infrastructure to the updated one.
- If tests fail, deployment decisions can be stopped with no impact on shoppers or customers
- When an unavailable situation requires that the deployment process be halted, it is possible to rely on the deployment decision and terminate the deployment immediately.
- Blue-Green deployment can be used for both SAP Commerce B2B and B2C Sites.
Key points to be taken into consideration:
- It's imperative to thoroughly test the green environment before redirecting traffic to it.
- Tests can run for up to two hours, with no customer traffic to the green deployment, letting your back-office test in confidence
- Requesting Support for a Failed Deployment - When a deployment fails for reasons which cannot be resolved, please contact the Support team for assistance.
- You can only create green endpoints for the following services: Storefront, JS Storefront, and API (application programming interfaces). That means, at this point, the background process or back office is not currently enabled as part of this feature. So please, take this into consideration and test your backend process and backend accordingly.
- The Blue-Green Deployment feature has been managed in release versions – which means it is part of the continuous improvement in the SAP Commerce Cloud , hence please expect improvements allied with this feature. You can also check what is new here: https://help.sap.com/whats-new/3d7190d2aab14c7d92f918cc3fa9a024?q=blue&locale=en-US
Deep dive into the Cloud Portal – Blue/Green deployment feature
How does this feature work? Let's simulate it and get some hints.
The user managing the builds would then create the endpoint, selecting the name, domain, service and its version, SSL certification, and if required, Proxy timeout. After that, he/she will then set the filtering, static files, and caching. Below, you can see the basic configuration as well as the field definition to guide you further:
With that configured and then the build deployment is targeted, the user managing this part will work on the deploy Build, which offers the option – Blue /Green as part of the deployment mode:
And after that, while visualizing the environment the user would be able to see the blue and green deployments:
And when the user navigates through the deployment history, it would be shown the overview of the deployment according to the relevant steps in a wizard and intuitive view – Blue deployment, Green Deployment, Deployment Preview, and Deployment Decision:
1-Blue Deployment: The Blue deployment represents the current active deployment serving the live traffic. During a green deployment, the blue one remains unchanged. If a final decision is made to accept the green deployment it will become the new blue deployment. Hence, the blue there is not part of the deployment itself, it rather gives all the relevant information in the same view of the blue-green deployment in place.
2-Green Deployment: The Green deployment represents the next deployment under evaluation. It uses the same backend database and search infrastructure as the blue deployment but typically is running a different version of your code. It is here where the green deployment update will be placed.
3-Deployment Preview: Once a green deployment reaches status deployed, the preview endpoints are used to access your application and perform the final quality check/assurance. A limited number of replicas are created for the preview phase. So, you will be able to see here the endpoints configured before and it is here you will be able to perform your tests, review and even monitor the whole environment in Dynatrace for SAP Commerce Cloud. Basically, this is the exact time to conduct the sanity check of your deployment.
4-Deployment Decision: Once the application has been previewed by your team as stated in step 3, the deployment decision will then be taken. An “accept” decision will promote the green build to become the new blue deployment serving live traffic. Whereas a “reject” decision discards the green deployment and leaves the existing blue deployment in place. You will be also able, for instance, in case you reject the deployment inform the reason of your decision for auditing purposes.
*Guidance is taken from the Commerce Cloud Platform - Deployment wizard
Blue-Green Documentation and Roadmap
For more information about Deploying a blue/green deployment, please refer here - Deploying a Green Preview Build and here is the collection of frequently asked questions about the Blue Green feature - Blue-Green FAQ
Please Review the roadmap of the blue/green deployment feature here – the Canary deployment feature is also coming!
Conclusion / Summary
And that is it! We have covered the key benefits, points to take into consideration, and cloud portal steps simulating a blue/green deployment and we hope you are now more familiar with this long-awaited feature. Thank you.
We hope you have enjoyed the reading,
Best Regard,
SAP CX Intelligent Adoption & Consumption Team
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