Canary deployment pattern in Jenkins - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Canary Deployment Pattern with Jenkins

📖 Scenario: You work as a DevOps engineer in a company that wants to release new versions of their web application safely. Instead of updating all users at once, they want to try the new version on a small group first. This is called a canary deployment. You will create a simple Jenkins pipeline script to automate this process.

🎯 Goal: Build a Jenkins pipeline script that deploys a new version of an application to a small group of users first (canary), waits for approval, and then deploys to all users.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a variable for the canary group size

Add a stage to deploy to the canary group

Add a manual approval step before full deployment

Add a stage to deploy to all users after approval

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Canary deployments help companies release new software versions safely by testing on a small group first, reducing risk.

💼 Career

Understanding canary deployments and Jenkins pipelines is essential for DevOps engineers to automate safe software releases.

1

Set up the canary group size variable

Create a variable called canaryGroupSize and set it to 10 to represent the number of users in the canary group.

Jenkins

# Create a variable called canaryGroupSize and set it to 10
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use def canaryGroupSize = 10 to create the variable.

2

Add a stage to deploy to the canary group

Add a stage named 'Deploy Canary' that prints "Deploying to canary group of size 10" using the canaryGroupSize variable.

Jenkins

def canaryGroupSize = 10

// Add a stage named 'Deploy Canary' that prints the deployment message
// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use stage('Deploy Canary') and inside steps use echo with the variable.

3

Add a manual approval step before full deployment

Add a stage named 'Approval' with an input step that asks 'Approve full deployment?' before continuing.

Jenkins

def canaryGroupSize = 10

pipeline {
    agent any
    stages {
        stage('Deploy Canary') {
            steps {
                echo "Deploying to canary group of size ${canaryGroupSize}"
            }
        }
        // Add a stage named 'Approval' with an input step
        // Your code here
    }
}

Need a hint?

Use stage('Approval') and inside steps add input message: 'Approve full deployment?'.

4

Add a stage to deploy to all users after approval

Add a stage named 'Deploy Full' that prints "Deploying to all users" after the approval stage.

Jenkins

def canaryGroupSize = 10

pipeline {
    agent any
    stages {
        stage('Deploy Canary') {
            steps {
                echo "Deploying to canary group of size ${canaryGroupSize}"
            }
        }
        stage('Approval') {
            steps {
                input message: 'Approve full deployment?'
            }
        }
        // Add a stage named 'Deploy Full' that prints deployment message
        // Your code here
    }
}

Need a hint?

Use stage('Deploy Full') and inside steps add echo "Deploying to all users".