fluxcd/flagger
Flagger
Flagger is a Kubernetes progressive delivery operator that automates the gradual release of new software versions. It functions as a canary release manager and traffic shifter, integrating with service meshes and ingress controllers to control request distribution between application versions.
The project focuses on reducing production risk by implementing canary releases, blue-green deployments, and A/B testing. It utilizes a metric-driven analysis loop to monitor request success rates and durations, automatically promoting a release or triggering a state-based rollback if health criteria are not met.
The tool provides additional validation through webhook-based test execution and synthetic load testing to verify stability. It also includes mechanisms for manual rollout gates, configuration synchronization, and event notifications to external communication providers.
The controller is deployed into a cluster using standard package managers with configurations for supported service meshes and ingress controllers.
Features
- Progressive Delivery Strategies - Automates progressive delivery strategies, including canary and blue-green updates, to reduce production risk.
- A/B Testing - Performs A/B testing by splitting traffic between different versions to compare performance and user behavior.
- Blue-Green Deployments - Executes blue-green deployments by routing traffic between two identical environments to ensure version stability.
- Change Rollback Mechanisms - Automatically reverts traffic to the stable version when health metrics fail to meet required thresholds.
- Custom Resource Controllers - Provides a custom resource controller that monitors the Kubernetes API to automate progressive delivery workflows.
- Automated Rollout Managers - Manages application updates through incremental rollouts with automated rollback capabilities based on metric analysis.
- Deployment Strategies - Implements varied release patterns using weighted traffic, header-based routing, and traffic mirroring.
- Deployment Strategy Mappings - Implements a declarative system to map configuration files to specific deployment patterns like canary or blue-green.
- Automated Canary Analysis - Automates canary analysis by comparing real-time metrics against a stable baseline to decide on promotion.
- Automated Metric Analysis - Continuously compares real-time performance metrics between stable and canary versions to automate release decisions.
- Canary Release Managers - Acts as a canary release manager by gradually routing traffic and monitoring health to prevent outages.
- Kubernetes Operators - Implements the Kubernetes operator pattern using custom resources to automate progressive delivery workflows.
- Kubernetes Traffic Controllers - Integrates with service meshes and ingress controllers to automate network traffic routing within Kubernetes.
- Automated Release Validation - Provides automated promotion and rollback based on webhook-driven tests and real-time health metrics.
- Weighted Traffic Splitting - Updates service mesh and ingress configurations to incrementally shift request percentages between application versions.
- Release Health Monitoring - Monitors request success rates and durations to automatically promote or roll back releases based on health.
- Automated Test Execution - Executes automated test suites via webhooks during the rollout to verify delivery process stability.
- Release Quality Validation - Triggers external acceptance and load tests to ensure new versions meet established quality standards before full promotion.
- Workflow Approval Gates - Provides manual approval steps to pause or resume the promotion process for human oversight.
- Webhook Quality Gates - Triggers external HTTP endpoints to execute acceptance or load tests as quality gates during the rollout process.
- Rollout Approval Gates - Enables manual oversight of a release through a pause-and-resume approval mechanism for workload promotion.
- Synthetic Traffic Generators - Generates synthetic traffic against application versions to verify stability and performance during rollout.
- Kubernetes Ecosystem - Automates progressive delivery and canary deployments.
