Rollback

The process of reverting a set of changes to a previous state. This is often used in software deployment when a new release causes issues.

A rollback is the process of reverting a system to a previous known-good state after a failed deployment, configuration change, or detected issue. Rollbacks are a critical safety mechanism in software operations, allowing teams to quickly recover from problems without having to diagnose and fix the issue under pressure.

Rollback strategies depend on the deployment approach. In blue-green deployments, rolling back means switching traffic back to the previous environment. In rolling deployments, it means redeploying the previous version to all instances. Database rollbacks involve reversing schema migrations, which requires that migration scripts include both "up" and "down" operations.

In API gateway and serverless environments, rollbacks are typically fast because deployments are lightweight. Reverting an API gateway configuration or a serverless function to a previous version can be done in seconds. Platforms like Cloudflare Workers support instant rollbacks to previous deployments. Version-controlled gateway configurations stored in Git make rollbacks straightforward -- reverting a commit and redeploying restores the previous state of routing rules, security policies, and rate limits.