97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know

Chapter 65. Production Is the Happiest Place on Earth

Josh Long

Production is my first favorite place on the internet. I love production. You should love production. Go as early and often as possible. Bring the kids. Bring the family. The weather is amazing. It’s the happiest place on Earth. It’s better than Disneyland!

Getting there isn’t always easy, but trust me: once you get there, you’re going to want to stay. It’s like Mauritius. You’ll love it! Here are some tips to make your journey as pleasant as possible:

Take the continuous delivery highway.

There’s no faster way to production. Continuous delivery lets you move quickly and consistently from the latest Git commit to production. In a continuous delivery pipeline, code moves automatically from developer to deployment, and every step in between, in one smooth motion. Continuous integration tools like Travis CI or Jenkins help, but try to mine information gleaned while in production. Canary releases are a technique to reduce the risk of introducing a new software version in production by slowly rolling out the change to a small cross-section of users. Continuous delivery tools like Netflix’s Spinnaker can automate this sort of nuanced deployment strategy.

Production can be surprising.

Be prepared! Services will fail. Don’t leave your clients in the lurch. Specify aggressive client-side timeouts. Service-level agreements ...