February 2017 Summaries

Canary deployments are a technique for incrementally testing changes on real-world traffic, allowing service teams to test multiple versions of their service simultaneously. A microservices architecture enables canary deployments by providing control over which versions of the service are being tested and when. A Layer 7 reverse proxy is necessary to support these capabilities, with Envoy Proxy or Edge Stack (a Kubernetes-native open source API Gateway built on Envoy) serving as a suitable choice. Canary deployments can be deployed using Kubernetes annotations, allowing for dynamic configuration and control over traffic routing. The process involves deploying a stable version of the service, making changes to test a canary deployment, and then rolling back if necessary, all while monitoring performance and traffic routing. This enables service teams to validate specific fixes and run A/B testing in a controlled environment.

The text discusses the use of Prometheus Operator in monitoring Envoy, an open source L7 proxy, deployed at the edge using Kubernetes. It explains how the Prometheus Operator can be used to automatically create and manage Prometheus instances for monitoring purposes. Additionally, it introduces Ambassador, a Kubernetes-native API Gateway built on Envoy, which configures and manages Envoy instances in Kubernetes. The tutorial assumes that you are running Kubernetes 1.8 or later with RBAC enabled. It provides step-by-step instructions for deploying the Prometheus Operator, Ambassador, and other necessary components to monitor Envoy using Prometheus. Finally, it demonstrates how to test the setup by routing requests through Ambassador to the httpbin service.