Upgrading an OpenStack infrastructure often means either downtime (for some services like Metadata), or running in a degraded mode (Control Plane or limited functionality). At Adobe, we had to figure out an approach that doesn't impact our users and stakeholders. We had to provide strong evidence for the upgrade benefits and it's performances impact. We started to do a canary releases by deploying new OpenStack version alongside existing deployments and by offloading small subset of production workloads. This approach allows us to A/B test and compare performance metrics between two Releases. Those KPI are driving the decision-making process for the upgrades. By leveraging Canary Releases techniques we managed to do complete infrastructure upgrades and migrate workloads between two OpenStack environments with no impact for our stakeholders and users.
Attendees will learn about difficulties of openstack upgrades and innovate way to make seemless upgrades when workload permit. We will present the benefit of canary deployment and A/B testing with KPIs driving the decision process.
