What is the recommended action for promoting a software delivery pipeline release through multiple stages in Google Cloud?

The recommended action of promoting the initial release through the staging and production stages underscores the importance of a streamlined deployment process within a software delivery pipeline. This approach allows for a controlled, systematic progression of the release, where the application first moves to a staging environment for further testing before ultimately reaching the production stage.

Promoting an initial release minimizes duplication and ensures that the same version of the software is consistently delivered across various stages, which aids in reducing discrepancies and improving traceability. It helps teams manage and validate changes incrementally, allowing for feedback and adjustments before the final production release. Furthermore, this methodology aligns with best practices in Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD), where the objective is to ensure reliability, minimize risks, and maintain high-quality standards throughout the software delivery life cycle.

The other approaches, while they may have their own merits in specific contexts, do not represent a holistic and effective method for promoting releases through multiple stages. For example, creating an image for each stage can lead to unnecessary complexities and increased overhead in managing multiple images, while configuring Binary Authorization is a security measure that focuses more on validating images rather than the overall deployment strategy. Additionally, having independent delivery pipelines for each stage may complicate coordination and lead to inconsistencies across stages.