Flagger

Flagger is a progressive delivery tool that automates the release process for applications running on Kubernetes. It reduces the risk of introducing a new software version in production by gradually shifting traffic to the new version while measuring metrics and running conformance tests.

Flagger implements several deployment strategies (Canary releases, A/B testing, Blue/Green mirroring) and integrates with various Kubernetes ingress controllers, service mesh, and monitoring solutions.

Flagger is a Cloud Native Computing Foundation graduated project and part of the Flux family of GitOps tools.

Documentation

The Flagger documentation can be found at docs.flagger.app.

• Install
  • Flagger Install with Flux
• Usage
  • How it works
  • Deployment strategies
  • Metrics analysis
  • Webhooks
  • Alerting
  • Monitoring

Adopters

The list of production users can be found at fluxcd.io/adopters/#flagger.

If you are using Flagger, please submit a PR to add your organization to the list!

Canary CRD

Flagger takes a Kubernetes deployment and optionally a horizontal pod autoscaler (HPA), then creates a series of objects (Kubernetes deployments, ClusterIP services, service mesh, or ingress routes). These objects expose the application on the mesh and drive the canary analysis and promotion.

Flagger keeps track of ConfigMaps and Secrets referenced by a Kubernetes Deployment and triggers a canary analysis if any of those objects change. When promoting a workload in production, both code (container images) and configuration (config maps and secrets) are being synchronized.

For a deployment named podinfo, a canary promotion can be defined using Flagger's custom resource:

apiVersion: flagger.app/v1beta1
kind: Canary
metadata:
  name: podinfo
  namespace: test
spec:
  # service mesh provider (optional)
  # can be: kubernetes, istio, linkerd, kuma, knative, nginx, contour, gloo, traefik, skipper
  # for Gateway API implementations: gatewayapi:v1 and gatewayapi:v1beta1
  provider: istio
  # deployment reference
  targetRef:
    apiVersion: apps/v1
    kind: Deployment
    name: podinfo
  # the maximum time in seconds for the canary deployment
  # to make progress before it is rollback (default 600s)
  progressDeadlineSeconds: 60
  # HPA reference (optional)
  autoscalerRef:
    apiVersion: autoscaling/v2
    kind: HorizontalPodAutoscaler
    name: podinfo
  service:
    # service name (defaults to targetRef.name)
    name: podinfo
    # ClusterIP port number
    port: 9898
    # container port name or number (optional)
    targetPort: 9898
    # port name can be http or grpc (default http)
    portName: http
    # add all the other container ports
    # to the ClusterIP services (default false)
    portDiscovery: true
    # HTTP match conditions (optional)
    match:
      - uri:
          prefix: /
    # HTTP rewrite (optional)
    rewrite:
      uri: /
    # request timeout (optional)
    timeout: 5s
  # promote the canary without analysing it (default false)
  skipAnalysis: false
  # define the canary analysis timing and KPIs
  analysis:
    # schedule interval (default 60s)
    interval: 1m
    # max number of failed metric checks before rollback
    threshold: 10
    # max traffic percentage routed to canary
    # percentage (0-100)
    maxWeight: 50
    # canary increment step
    # percentage (0-100)
    stepWeight: 5
    # validation (optional)
    metrics:
    - name: request-success-rate
      # builtin Prometheus check
      # minimum req success rate (non 5xx responses)
      # percentage (0-100)
      thresholdRange:
        min: 99
      interval: 1m
    - name: request-duration
      # builtin Prometheus check
      # maximum req duration P99
      # milliseconds
      thresholdRange:
        max: 500
      interval: 30s
    - name: "database connections"
      # custom metric check
      templateRef:
        name: db-connections
      thresholdRange:
        min: 2
        max: 100
      interval: 1m
    # testing (optional)
    webhooks:
      - name: "conformance test"
        type: pre-rollout
        url: http://flagger-helmtester.test/
        timeout: 5m
        metadata:
          type: "helmv3"
          cmd: "test run podinfo -n test"
      - name: "load test"
        type: rollout
        url: http://flagger-loadtester.test/
        metadata:
          cmd: "hey -z 1m -q 10 -c 2 http://podinfo.test:9898/"
    # alerting (optional)
    alerts:
      - name: "dev team Slack"
        severity: error
        providerRef:
          name: dev-slack
          namespace: flagger
      - name: "qa team Discord"
        severity: warn
        providerRef:
          name: qa-discord
      - name: "on-call MS Teams"
        severity: info
        providerRef:
          name: on-call-msteams

For more details on how the canary analysis and promotion works please read the docs.

Features

Service Mesh

| Feature | Istio | Linkerd | Kuma | Knative | Kubernetes CNI | |--------------------------------------------|--------------------|--------------------|--------------------|--------------------|--------------------| | Canary deployments (weighted traffic) | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_minus_sign: | | A/B testing (headers and cookies routing) | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_minus_sign: | :heavy_minus_sign: | :heavy_minus_sign: | :heavy_minus_sign: | | Blue/Green deployments (traffic switch) | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_minus_sign: | :heavy_check_mark: | | Blue/Green deployments (traffic mirroring) | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_minus_sign: | :heavy_minus_sign: | :heavy_minus_sign: | :heavy_minus_sign: | | Webhooks (acceptance/load testing) | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | | Manual gating (approve/pause/resume) | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | | Request success rate check (L7 metric) | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_minus_sign: | :heavy_check_mark: | | Request duration check (L7 metric) | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_minus_sign: | :heavy_check_mark: | | Custom metric checks | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: |

Ingress

| Feature | Contour | Gloo | NGINX | Skipper | Traefik | Apache APISIX | |-------------------------------------------|--------------------|--------------------|--------------------|--------------------|--------------------|--------------------| | Canary deployments (weighted traffic) | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | | A/B testing (headers and cookies routing) | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_minus_sign: | :heavy_minus_sign: | :heavy_minus_sign: | | Blue/Green deployments (traffic switch) | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | | Webhooks (acceptance/load testing) | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | | Manual gating (approve/pause/resume) | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | | Request success rate check (L7 metric) | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_minus_sign: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | | Request duration check (L7 metric) | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_minus_sign: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | | Custom metric checks | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: |

**Networkin