SDSystem Design Studio
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Complete book · 11. Deployment, Migration, and Evolution

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Review an architecture systematically from boundaries through operability and evolution.

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Agentic systems

Design agent and LLM systems with explicit contracts, failure boundaries, and review gates.

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Complete handbook · Section 20 of 31

11. Deployment, Migration, and Evolution

A design is incomplete if it only works after a perfect one-time deployment. Production systems change while old and new versions may coexist. API contracts, messages, database schemas, and configuration must evolve safely. Progressive rollout reduces the blast radius of a bad change and creates an explicit decision point before full deployment.

Evidence: S10, S25, S30, S33, S55

Checklist

  • Build and deployment are automated and repeatable.

  • Infrastructure/configuration changes are versioned where practical.

  • The rollout strategy is defined: rolling, canary, blue/green, or another justified method.

  • A rollback or roll-forward strategy exists.

  • Database changes remain compatible during mixed-version deployment.

  • API and message changes are backward compatible where possible.

  • Breaking changes have a migration/deprecation plan.

  • Feature flags are used only where their lifecycle and cleanup are managed.

  • Canary success/failure criteria are measurable.

  • Configuration changes are reviewed and observable.

  • Production smoke/health validation exists after deployment.

  • The release process records what version/configuration is running.

Evidence: S10, S25, S30, S33, S55

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