What deployment and testing strategy should you choose for a CI/CD pipeline that aims to mitigate deployment complexity and rollback duration?

Choosing a blue/green deployment strategy combined with canary testing is effective for mitigating deployment complexity and minimizing rollback duration.

In a blue/green deployment, two identical environments are maintained: one (the blue environment) serves the live production traffic, while the other (the green environment) is used for staging the new version of the application. Once the new version is fully tested in the green environment, the traffic can be switched to it with minimal downtime and risk. If any issues arise after the switch, rolling back to the previous version is straightforward and quick, as the blue environment is still intact and can be reactivated.

Canary testing further enhances this approach by allowing you to release the new version to a small subset of users before fully transitioning to it. This provides an opportunity to monitor the new version's performance and gather feedback without impacting the entire user base. If the canary release encounters issues, it can be rolled back without affecting all users, thus reducing the complexity and risk associated with deployments.

This combination ensures that deployments are safer and more manageable while allowing for prompt responses to any issues that may arise, ultimately leading to lower rollback durations and less disruption.