deployment and operations

CI/CD Deployment Pipeline Basics

A deployment pipeline turns a reviewed commit into a verified release. Keep artifact creation, tests, migration strategy, deployment, health checks, and rollback explicit.

Promote One Release Artifact

Build or select one immutable release artifact.
Run checks before promotion.
Deploy with migration and rollback planning.

Treat Deployment As A Verified Sequence

Promote to staging.
Run smoke and health checks.
Deploy production with release record.

Plan For Migrations And Rollback

Building separately in each environment introduces drift.
Migrations can make rollback harder.
Success exit without health verification is incomplete.

Pipeline Stages

validate -> test -> package -> deploy staging -> smoke test -> approve -> deploy production -> health check -> monitor -> rollback if needed

The pipeline is ready when the same release can be promoted and rolled back predictably. A successful command exit is not enough: health checks and a short observation window should prove that the serving application is healthy.

Practice

Practice: Sketch A Deployment Pipeline

Sketch the release stages for a PHP web application with database migrations and a rollback requirement.

Requirements

Build or select one immutable release artifact.
Run checks before promotion.
Deploy with migration and rollback planning.
Promote to staging.
Run smoke and health checks.
Deploy production with release record.

Show solution

Validate, test, and package one immutable release. Promote that same artifact to staging, run migrations with a deliberate compatibility plan, and execute smoke plus health checks before production approval.

Record the production release, observe health after deployment, and keep rollback steps available. Database changes need special care because application rollback may not automatically undo a migration.