About Dark Launch Deployments
This topic provides an overview of the Dark Launch deployment methodology and goes into detail about when to use it.
Scenario
A new version of your Application is ready for release. You want to check the test performance and learn if the Application can handle the feature load before going to production. To achieve this, you can apply a Dark Launch strategy. With this approach, new features are first enabled on the back-end and only to a subset of users. These users will inadvertently make queries to the new code and show areas where improvements are needed before deploying the actual release. The Dark Launch strategy is recommended to ensure a smooth launch of massive infrastructure deployments to deploy new functionality that introduces breaking changes on how users interact with your application.
To keep changes under control, the new code is wrapped in logical chunks with feature toggles (aka feature flags), which allows to compartmentalize risk and comply with the Test-Driven Development process.
For example, you can wrap the new code so that it is only displayed on certain Targets or Environments:
See also: