

Why are you still deploying overnight? - bcrescimanno
http://briancrescimanno.com/2011/09/29/why-are-you-still-deploying-overnight/

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ShawnJG
I have to completely disagree with this author. Even if you're confident in
your code, send your best people to work on it, are able to rollout a phased
deployment and have the capability for quick rollback in overnight or off-peak
deployment is preferable. If ever there was anything to happen unless people
affected by it the better. Why put the strain of peak traffic and bandwidth up
against a brand-new deployment?

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sixtofour
You make a good point. So does the article.

What I was wondering while reading the article: when will it become common
that there is no peak or off-peak time? There are some businesses there now,
but at some point there will be no such thing for most businesses.

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bcrescimanno
That's a good point that I honestly didn't think to bring up in the article
directly--thought I did mention that for businesses operating globally, the
notion of "overnight" becomes meaningless.

I think the first commenter took the notion a bit far; I didn't mean to imply
that we should be deploying during your absolute busiest hours. However, I
think deploying overnight is a bad idea--and, moreover, I think it's dangerous
to assume that simply "avoiding your customers" is a scalable, long-term
solution for deployment.

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ShawnJG
you're right, "avoiding your customers" is not a scalable long-term solution
for deployment. As businesses, big or small become more global this will
become a bigger problem. As I'm sitting here reading this I see a potential
for new business. We need to find some way to filter traffic. Think about two
different versions of the website existing at the same address and in front of
the website sits a fork (like a fork in the road) that splits incoming traffic
into two groups. As traffic comes in a portion, say 20% is then the diverted
to your brand-new deployment while the rest, 80% is directed to your older
site. It's almost like having an semi-open beta in regards to the new
deployment. It will be tested in real time under real circumstances. Then as
bugs get ironed out you can increase the ratio from 80 – 20 gradually until
all traffic is now being fed into the brand-new live site. so who wants to co-
found this with me? we might be able to make it in time for the next round of
Y Combinator!

by the way I didn't think you were saying that you should deploy during your
busiest time, I just met all things being equal, the should definitely look
for "off-peak" times to rollout new deployments. But we both seem to agree
that the long-term solution. Globalization is going to make off-peak times a
thing of the past. Hence see my solution above, we can get ahead of it and
make some money.

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bcrescimanno
Not sure there's a ton of money to be made; solutions like what you're
describing already exist and are in use at mature development shops that
understand that they don't have to be afraid to roll out new code at 9:30 am.

