Canary release
Canary release is a way to roll out and deploy a new software version for testing purposes. While testing, the current version remains active and the new one is only used in a certain percentage of cases.
With an API gateway's canary release, incoming requests are randomly divided into two parts as per the set percentage value. A small number of requests is usually handled by the canary release and the remaining ones, by the current release. You can increase or decrease the percentage of requests based on which you are testing the changes.
Usage
To create a canary release, write an OpenAPI specification using one or more variables (see Specification parameterization), and then create or update an API gateway. Specify the following:
- Specification with variables
- Variable values for the canary release
- Percentage of requests to process by the canary release
If a request is handled by the canary release, a response returned by API Gateway will contain an additional header, x-yc-apigateway-release, set to canary.