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Deployments

A deployment publishes an application’s release to a scope, where it can run and serve users. It delivers a built asset to the underlying technology, such as virtual machines, Kubernetes, or serverless platforms, using any configured parameters for that environment.

Key features​

  • Asset-based – Deploy a specific released asset to a scope.
  • Progressive rollout – Shift traffic gradually or all at once.
  • Rollback – Revert to a previous deployment if needed.
  • Approvals – Add review steps for sensitive releases.
  • Groups – Deploy to multiple scopes at once.
  • Strategies – Reuse rollout rules for pacing, targeting, and rollback.

Deployment strategies​

Deployment strategies let you define how a release is rolled out and under what conditions it rolls back.
They give teams fine-grained control over traffic shifts, rollback triggers, and targeting rules. This helps you deliver changes more safely and consistently.

With deployment strategies, you can:

  • Control rollouts – Gradually shift traffic (e.g., blue-green) or cut over instantly (all-in).
  • Automate rollbacks – Trigger reversions based on telemetry thresholds, like high HTTP error rate.
  • Target precisely – Apply rules to specific environments, resources, or regions.
  • Enforce policies – Ensure compliance with internal and platform-level guardrails.

Strategies can be created once and reused across multiple scopes, or customized at deployment time for one-off needs.

See Deployment strategies for full details, examples, and configuration options.

Deployment groups​

A deployment group lets you deploy to multiple scopes at once. While each deployment runs independently, the group provides centralized visibility and control.

Key behaviors​

  • Flexible grouping: Include scopes of any type or environment.
  • Individual control: Cancel or roll back specific deployments at any time.
  • Group status: The group is marked FINALIZED only when all deployments reach a terminal state.
  • Cancellation rules: Groups can be canceled while they are still in progress, that is, while they are waiting for an approval or while their deployments are being created, waiting for instances, or running. Once the group starts finalizing, it can no longer be canceled.
  • Rollback behavior: Rollback is allowed unless the group is FINALIZING.

Approvals and policies​

Approval policies help enforce control over critical deployments by requiring explicit review before they proceed.

Examples

  • Block production deployments during a holiday freeze
  • Require approval from a senior engineer for sensitive scopes
  • Auto-deny deployments by non-whitelisted users in production

When a deployment is denied during approval, its status becomes CREATING_APPROVAL_DENIED.

See the Approvals guide to learn how to create and manage policies.

Deleted deployments​

There's a special situation where an active deployment is not replaced by a new one. This occurs when a scope is stopped, and the deployment status is set to DELETED.

Note: This only applies to Kubernetes and server instance scopes.

Learn more​