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 between the two versions as per the set percentage value. The canary release usually handles a small number of requests, while the current release, all the remaining ones. You can increase or decrease the percentage of requests to test 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 the canary release handles a request, a response returned by API Gateway will contain an additional header, x-yc-apigateway-release, set to canary.