Smoke testing in production with synthetic monitors

Smoke testing in production is a critical component of modern continuous delivery and deployment processes, ensuring that core functionalities of software applications work as expected with minimal configuration. This approach involves using synthetic monitors to automate tests for performance, functionality, and availability, thereby reducing risks for end-users and improving software reliability. Automated smoke tests allow for rapid feedback and quicker issue resolution by running in parallel with other tests, thus supporting continuous integration pipelines. The article highlights the importance of smoke testing both in production and staging environments to catch high-priority issues before they affect users and emphasizes the utility of synthetic monitors in tracking application performance and availability. Through custom dashboards and alert notifications, teams gain better visibility into deployments, enabling them to balance deployment velocity with service stability.