Deployment Automation

Overview

Establish automated deployment pipelines that safely and reliably move applications across development, staging, and production environments with minimal manual intervention and risk.

When to Use

• Continuous deployment to Kubernetes

• Infrastructure as Code deployment

• Multi-environment promotion

• Blue-green deployment strategies

• Canary release management

• Infrastructure provisioning

• Automated rollback procedures

Implementation Examples

1. Helm Deployment Chart

helm/Chart.yaml

apiVersion: v2 name: myapp description: My awesome application type: application version: 1.0.0

helm/values.yaml

replicaCount: 3 image: repository: ghcr.io/myorg/myapp pullPolicy: IfNotPresent tag: "1.0.0" service: type: ClusterIP port: 80 targetPort: 3000 resources: requests: memory: "256Mi" cpu: "250m" limits: memory: "512Mi" cpu: "500m" autoscaling: enabled: true minReplicas: 2 maxReplicas: 10

2. GitHub Actions Deployment Workflow

.github/workflows/deploy.yml

name: Deploy

on: push: branches: [main] workflow_dispatch: inputs: environment: description: 'Environment to deploy to' required: true default: 'staging' type: choice options: - staging - production

env: REGISTRY: ghcr.io IMAGE_NAME: ${{ github.repository }}

jobs: deploy: runs-on: ubuntu-latest environment: name: ${{ github.event.inputs.environment || 'staging' }} permissions: contents: read packages: read

steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v3

  - name: Determine target environment
    id: env
    run: |
      if [[ "${{ github.ref }}" == "refs/heads/main" ]]; then
        echo "environment=staging" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT
      else
        echo "environment=staging" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT
      fi

  - name: Setup kubectl
    uses: azure/setup-kubectl@v3
    with:
      version: 'latest'

  - name: Configure kubectl
    run: |
      mkdir -p $HOME/.kube
      echo "${{ secrets.KUBE_CONFIG }}" | base64 -d > $HOME/.kube/config
      chmod 600 $HOME/.kube/config

  - name: Deploy with Helm
    run: |
      helm repo add myrepo ${{ secrets.HELM_REPO_URL }}
      helm repo update

      helm upgrade --install myapp myrepo/myapp \
        --namespace ${{ steps.env.outputs.environment }} \
        --create-namespace \
        --values helm/values-${{ steps.env.outputs.environment }}.yaml \
        --set image.tag=${{ github.sha }} \
        --wait \
        --timeout 5m

  - name: Verify deployment
    run: |
      kubectl rollout status deployment/myapp \
        -n ${{ steps.env.outputs.environment }} \
        --timeout=5m

3. ArgoCD Deployment

argocd/myapp-app.yaml

apiVersion: argoproj.io/v1alpha1 kind: Application metadata: name: myapp namespace: argocd spec: project: default

source: repoURL: https://github.com/myorg/helm-charts targetRevision: HEAD path: myapp helm: releaseName: myapp values: | image: tag: v1.0.0

destination: server: https://kubernetes.default.svc namespace: production

syncPolicy: automated: prune: true selfHeal: true syncOptions: - CreateNamespace=true retry: limit: 5 backoff: duration: 5s factor: 2 maxDuration: 3m

5. Blue-Green Deployment

#!/bin/bash

Deploy green, run tests, switch traffic

helm upgrade --install myapp-green ./chart --set version=v2.0.0 --wait kubectl run smoke-test --image=postman/newman --rm -- run tests/smoke.json

if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then kubectl patch service myapp -p '{"spec":{"selector":{"version":"v2.0.0"}}}' echo "✅ Traffic switched to green" else helm uninstall myapp-green exit 1 fi

Best Practices

✅ DO

• Use Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Helm)

• Implement GitOps workflows

• Use blue-green deployments

• Implement canary releases

• Automate rollback procedures

• Test deployments in staging first

• Use feature flags for gradual rollout

• Monitor deployment health

• Document deployment procedures

• Implement approval gates for production

• Version infrastructure code

• Use environment parity

❌ DON'T

• Deploy directly to production

• Skip testing in staging

• Use manual deployment scripts

• Deploy without rollback plan

• Ignore health checks

• Use hardcoded configuration

• Deploy during critical hours

• Skip pre-deployment validation

• Forget to backup before deploy

• Deploy from local machines

Deployment Checklist

Pre-deployment verification

• Run tests in staging
• Verify database migrations
• Check infrastructure capacity
• Review changelog
• Verify rollback plan
• Notify stakeholders
• Monitor error rates
• Prepare rollback script

Resources

• Helm Documentation

• Terraform Documentation

• ArgoCD Documentation

• Flagger Canary Releases