Progressive deployment and termination of canary instances for software analysis

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9225621-B2
Application number	US-201313926797-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 25, 2013
Priority date	Jun 25, 2013
Publication date	Dec 29, 2015
Grant date	Dec 29, 2015

Abstract

A data processing method, comprising: using computing apparatus, causing instantiating a plurality of baseline application instances that are running a first version of software, and one or more canary application instances that are running a second version of the software; using computing apparatus including a load balancer, causing selectively routing a first proportion of incoming requests to the baseline instances, and routing a second proportion of the incoming requests to the canary instances; monitoring the plurality of canary instances to collect performance data for performance metrics; determining that the performance data indicates a negative performance issue, and in response thereto: using computing apparatus, automatically updating the first proportion to be larger and updating the second proportion to be smaller, and then reconfiguring the load balancer based upon the first proportion and the second proportion; terminating one or more of the canary application instances.

First claim

We claim:

1. A data processing method, comprising:
using computing apparatus, causing instantiating, a plurality of baseline application instances that are running a first version of software, and one or more canary application instances that are running a second version of the software;
using computing apparatus including a load balancer, causing selectively routing a first proportion of incoming requests to the baseline instances, and routing a second proportion of the incoming requests to the canary instances;
monitoring the plurality of canary instances to collect performance data for a plurality of performance metrics;
determining that the performance data indicates a negative performance issue, and in response thereto:
using computing apparatus, automatically updating the first proportion to be larger and updating the second proportion to be smaller, and then reconfiguring the load balancer based upon the first proportion and the second proportion.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
determining that the performance data does not indicate a negative performance issue, and in response thereto:
using computing apparatus, automatically updating the first proportion to be smaller and updating the second proportion to be larger, and then reconfiguring the load balancer based upon the first proportion and the second proportion.

3. The method of claim 2 , further comprising terminating one or more of the baseline application instances.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the determining that the performance data indicates a negative performance issue includes using computing apparatus to evaluate at least one of (i) a threshold amount of variance, (ii) one or more error messages relating to the collected performance data and (iii) a lack of performance data.

5. The method of claim 1 , comprising causing instantiating the plurality of baseline application instances in a first cluster and causing instantiating the one or more canary application instances in a second cluster.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the first cluster and second cluster are defined by metadata that is created and managed using a web application console that is independent of a particular cloud service provider at which the plurality of baseline application instances and the one or more canary application instances have been instantiated.

7. The method of claim 1 , comprising causing instantiating the plurality of baseline application instances in a first cluster and causing instantiating the one or more canary application instances in a second cluster, and comprising instantiating the plurality of baseline application instances using a first cloud service provider and causing instantiating the one or more canary application instances using a second cloud service provider that is different from the first cloud service provider.

8. The method of claim 1 ,
using computing apparatus, a plurality of canary application instances corresponding in number to the baseline application instances;
using computing apparatus including a load balancer, causing selectively routing a first proportion of incoming requests to the baseline instances, and routing a second proportion of the incoming requests to the canary application instances;
using computing apparatus, automatically progressively updating the first proportion to be smaller and updating the second proportion to be larger, reconfiguring the load balancer based upon the first proportion and the second proportion, and progressively terminating the baseline application instances until all the requests are directed only to the canary application instances.

9. The method of claim 1 , further comprising terminating one or more of the canary application instances.

10. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing one or more sequences of instructions which when executed cause performing:
using computing apparatus, causing instantiating, at one or more cloud service providers, a plurality of baseline application instances that are running a first version of software, and one or more canary application instances that are running a second version of the software;
using computing apparatus including a load balancer, causing selectively routing a first proportion of incoming requests to the baseline instances, and routing a second proportion of the incoming requests to the canary instances;
monitoring the plurality of canary instances to collect performance data for a plurality of performance metrics;
determining that the performance data indicates a negative performance issue, and in response thereto:
using computing apparatus, automatically updating the first proportion to be larger and updating the second proportion to be smaller, and then reconfiguring the load balancer based upon the first proportion and the second proportion.

11. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 10 , further comprising sequences of instructions which when executed cause:
determining that the performance data does not indicate a negative performance issue, and in response thereto:
using computing apparatus, automatically updating the first proportion to be smaller and updating the second proportion to be larger, and then reconfiguring the load balancer based upon the first proportion and the second proportion.

12. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 11 , further comprising sequences of instructions which when executed cause terminating one or more of the baseline application instances.

13. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 10 , wherein the sequences of instructions which when executed cause determining comprise sequences of instructions which when executed cause determining that the performance data indicates a negative performance issue using computing apparatus to evaluate at least one of (i) a threshold amount of variance, (ii) one or more error messages relating to the collected performance data and (iii) a lack of performance data.

14. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 10 , comprising sequences of instructions which when executed cause instantiating the plurality of baseline application instances in a first cluster and causing instantiating the one or more canary application instances in a second cluster.

15. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 14 , wherein the first cluster and second cluster are defined by metadata that is created and managed using a web application console that is independent of a particular cloud service provider at which the plurality of baseline application instances and the one or more canary application instances have been instantiated.

16. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 10 , comprising sequences of instructions which when executed cause instantiating the plurality of baseline application instances in a first cluster and causing instantiating the one or more canary application instances in a second cluster, and comprising instantiating the plurality of baseline application instances using a first cloud service provider and causing instantiating the one or more canary application instances using a second cloud service provider that is different from the first cloud service provider.

17. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 10 , further comprising sequences of instructions which when executed cause:
using computing apparatus, a plurality of canary application instances corresponding in number to the baseline application instances;
using computing apparatus including a load balancer, causing selectively routing a first p

Assignees

• Netflix Inc

Inventors

• Tseitlin Ariel
• Sondow Joe

Classifications

• H04L43/08 Primary

  Monitoring or testing based on specific metrics, e.g. QoS, energy consumption or environmental parameters · CPC title

• H04L41/5025 Primary

  by proactively reacting to service quality change, e.g. by reconfiguration after service quality degradation or upgrade · CPC title

• H04L41/5096

  wherein the managed service relates to distributed or central networked applications · CPC title

• G06F11/368

  for test version control, e.g. updating test cases to a new software version · CPC title

• H04L29/08153

  Electricity · mapped topic