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Lesson 22 / 23

Monitoring & Rollback

Confirm every deploy is healthy with monitoring and health checks, and roll back fast to the last good artifact.

Watch the deploy, not just the pipeline

A green pipeline only proves the code built and passed tests — it says nothing about production. After deploy, watch error rates, latency, and key business metrics for a window before calling it 'done'.

Rollback strategies

When something breaks, the fastest fix is usually to roll back to the last known-good artifact — not to debug live in production. Blue-green makes this instant; rolling deployments roll the batches back the same gradual way.

Automate the trigger

Mature pipelines wire health checks and error-rate alerts to trigger an automatic rollback, instead of waiting for a human to notice and act at 2 a.m.

Final quiz 1 of 8

Final quiz

Quick check: What is continuous integration?

  • Deploying once a year
  • Manual testing only
  • Merging often and verifying each change automatically
  • Branching for months
Answer

Merging often and verifying each change automatically — Small frequent merges reduce conflicts.

Final quiz 2 of 8

Final quiz

Quick check: What separates continuous delivery from continuous deployment?

  • Delivery has no tests
  • Deployment skips builds
  • They are identical
  • A human approves the production release in delivery
Answer

A human approves the production release in delivery — Deployment releases every passing change automatically.

Final quiz 3 of 8

Final quiz

Quick check: Why build an artifact only once?

  • So the exact tested output is what gets deployed
  • To save disk space only
  • To skip tests
  • Because builds are random
Answer

So the exact tested output is what gets deployed — Rebuilding at each stage can change the result.

Final quiz 4 of 8

Final quiz

Quick check: Why pin a GitHub Action to a version tag or SHA?

  • It runs faster
  • A branch reference can change unexpectedly
  • Branches are not allowed
  • It hides logs
Answer

A branch reference can change unexpectedly — Pinning prevents surprise or malicious updates.

Final quiz 5 of 8

Final quiz

Quick check: Which checks should run first in a fail-fast pipeline?

  • Production deploy
  • Slow end-to-end tests
  • Fast, cheap ones like linting and unit tests
  • Manual sign-off
Answer

Fast, cheap ones like linting and unit tests — Cheap failures save time and money.

Final quiz 6 of 8

Final quiz

Quick check: Which strategy needs no duplicate full environment?

  • Blue-green
  • Both
  • Neither
  • Rolling deployment
Answer

Rolling deployment — Rolling replaces instances in batches.

Final quiz 7 of 8

Final quiz

Quick check: Where should CI secrets live?

  • In the CI system's encrypted secret store
  • In the repository code
  • In README files
  • In the build artifact
Answer

In the CI system's encrypted secret store — Never commit credentials to git.

Final quiz 8 of 8

Final quiz

Quick check: What should happen after a deploy?

  • Nothing
  • Monitor health and roll back if needed
  • Delete logs
  • Skip alerts
Answer

Monitor health and roll back if needed — A deploy is done when it is confirmed healthy.