Quick Recovery for Your App Engine Apps After a Broken Deployment

Life in the cloud is thrilling, but it can be unpredictable, right? Especially as you’re gearing up for the Google Cloud Certified Associate Cloud Engineer exam, you should definitely know how to deal with those pesky deployment hiccups. So, let’s chat about what to do when your App Engine application trips up after a broken deployment—because this is a scenario you really don’t want to scramble through when the clock is ticking!

Imagine this: You’ve been running your App Engine applications in the Standard Environment, everything's smooth sailing, and then bam—a broken deployment hits. Your heart skips a beat as you realize the site is down. What’s the quickest way to get things back on their feet?

Choices, Choices: What Will It Be?

Here are the options we’re weighing:

• A. Have the developers fix the issue and deploy.
• B. Use the gcloud app rollback command.
• C. In the UI, click Traffic Splitting and direct 100% of the traffic to the previous version.
• D. In the UI, click the Rollback button on the versions page.

Now, let’s unpack this a bit. You might be thinking, “Let the developers fix it, right? They’ll get it done in no time.” But here’s the catch: waiting for your devs to patch up the glitch could leave your site in limbo. We’re talking about potentially lengthy downtime, and that’s not great in today’s fast-paced world (maybe even slow down your caffeine fix!).

Then there’s option D—clicking the rollback button in the UI. Lovely thought, but this still treads into waiting territory. You’d still be stuck holding the bag until the issue is manually fixed and redeployed.

The Secret Sauce: Traffic Splitting

But then we have option C—using Traffic Splitting within App Engine’s UI. Imagine being able to direct 100% of your traffic back to the previous version of your application while the developers work their magic behind the scenes. It’s like choosing to grill burgers on Sunday instead of waiting for that lasagna to cook for two hours. You keep the barbecue sizzling while the lasagna is still a work in progress!

Here’s the thing: utilizing that Traffic Splitting feature means your users can keep accessing the application without a hitch. They won’t even realize there was an issue; they’ll stay blissfully unaware while your teams work on fixing the bug. And once the issue is resolved? Easy peasy—switch back to the new deployment without missing a beat.

The Wrapping Up

So remember, when things go haywire after a deployment, don’t panic. Choose wisely, keep your app accessible, and maintain a solid user experience while you work through the kinks. That’s the kind of cloud-savvy mindset that’ll not only help you ace that Google Cloud certification but also make you a valuable asset in any tech environment.

It’s the little things like this—understanding deployment strategies and how to recover—that make a huge difference in the cloud engineering world. Until next time, keep experimenting, learning, and laughing through it all!