rollback-strategy-advisor

Rollback Strategy Advisor

Provide safe and effective rollback strategies for failed deployments.

Core Capabilities

This skill helps recover from failed deployments by:

1. Assessing failure impact - Identifying what failed and what needs rollback
2. Recommending rollback strategy - Choosing the appropriate approach based on failure type
3. Providing step-by-step guidance - Clear procedural instructions for execution
4. Validating rollback success - Ensuring system returns to stable state
5. Preventing data loss - Protecting critical data during rollback operations

Rollback Strategy Workflow

Step 1: Assess the Failure

Understand what failed and the scope of impact.

Key Questions:

• What component failed? (Application, database, infrastructure, configuration)
• When did the failure occur? (During deployment, post-deployment, gradual degradation)
• What is the current system state? (Partially deployed, fully deployed, crashed)
• Is the system serving traffic? (Production load, maintenance mode, offline)
• Are there data changes? (Database migrations applied, user data modified)

Gather Information:

# Check deployment status
docker ps -a  # Container status
docker logs <container-name> --tail 100  # Recent logs

# Check system health
curl http://localhost:8080/health  # Health endpoint
docker stats  # Resource usage

# Identify deployment artifacts
docker images | grep <app-name>  # Available images
git log --oneline -10  # Recent commits

Output: Failure Assessment

Component: Application container
Failure Time: 5 minutes post-deployment
System State: New version deployed, returning 500 errors
Traffic: Receiving production traffic (degraded service)
Data Changes: No database migrations in this deployment

Step 2: Choose Rollback Strategy

Select the appropriate strategy based on failure type and system state.

Strategy Decision Tree:

Is database migration involved?
├─ YES → See "Database Rollback Strategy" (Step 3.4)
└─ NO → Continue

Is infrastructure changed?
├─ YES → See "Infrastructure Rollback Strategy" (Step 3.3)
└─ NO → Continue

Is configuration changed?
├─ YES → See "Configuration Rollback Strategy" (Step 3.2)
└─ NO → Application Code Rollback (Step 3.1)