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Deploying your Lumen caching configuration

Once a configuration is committed, it must be deployed into production to take effect. There are two deployment modes to choose from using one or both of the "production slots". Production slots are occupied by specific configuration versions with designated traffic percentage.

 

From the "Configurations" tab, find the configuration and specific version you wish to deploy and click the "deploy" button once all your needed configurations settings have been committed. If you want to deploy an older version of a configuration (perhaps to rollback) visit the versions tab of the desired configuration and select deploy from the actions drop down.

Lumen now allows you to gradually deploy new configurations with minimal risk, using the same principles as the Canary release deployments. For this, we have 2 productions slots you can use:

 

Current slot

 

The "Current" slot is the main slot should be used as your main production configuration slot. When only the "Current" slot is used, 100% of your traffic is using the configuration you placed in that slot. This should be the routine state of your deployments.

Important: If you are deploying your first configuration, make sure you add the properties CNAMES in your DNS records after the deployment is complete.

Candidate Slot

 

The "Candidate" slot should be used when you want to deploy a new Configuration version into production. Adding a Configuration to the "Candidate" slot will allow you to redirect a part of your traffic (1%, 5% or more) to this new Configuration, and verify that this new Configuration doesn’t introduce any errors or issues to your production traffic. Meanwhile the rest of the servers are activated with the configuration occupying the "Current" slot.

 

Once you have completed your tests and have enough confidence in the new configuration, you can increase the Candidate traffic share by clicking on "Edit Traffic Allocation".

 

"Traffic percentage" increases are made by you at the pace you desire. Each increase in traffic to the candidate slot causes a corresponding decrease to the current slot. Once the traffic adjustments reach 100%, and the changes candidate configuration is fully vetted, the candidate configuration should be promoted to the "Current" slot causing the candidate slot to be removed until it is needed again. You can do this by clicking on "Edit Traffic Allocation", and then "Promote" the configuration to "Current" slot.

Note: You can only promote a Configuration from Candidate to Current slot if the Candidate slot traffic percentage is 100%

Conversely, if the candidate configuration results in negative outcomes, the candidate slot traffic percentage can be rapidly reduced to, even to 0%, or the slot can be deleted. In that case, all the traffic rolls back to the "Current" configuration already in place.

Important: The end goal steady state, should always be to have a fully vetted configuration in the "current" slot governing all traffic. Do NOT leave a candidate configuration in place indefinitely.

If your service is in the process of being migrated to Version 3, you may notice that staged activation is foundational. In this case, a Lumen engineer is cautiously rolling out your migrated configuration in the candidate slot, while your premigration configuration continues to serve the rest of the traffic until the migration candidate configuration is fully approved.

Staged activation production deployment

Staged Activation Helpful Tips

The current and candidate slot configurations should have the same properties.

 

The traffic allocation settings are applied to every active property (which you can see in the property registry). The traffic allocation for a property in one slot always equals 100% minus the allocated traffic from the other slot. Therefore, if a property is not present in one slot, it will be applied to 100% of the network.

 

Media Portal to help vet your candidate configuration.

 

There are several tools you might find useful during a staged activation interval.

  • Use Caching Real-Time metrics to look for anomalies, perhaps more than usual 5xx’s etc.

  • Use CDN Usage Reports (historical usage stats) if you staged deployment spans several days or weeks.

  • Set alerts to be automatically notified based on triggers you define.

     

Learn more about monitoring your service.

Direct Deployment

In some cases, you might need to directly replace your Current slot Configuration without going through Staged Activation. You are able to do that, by selecting a Configuration, and pushing it directly to the Current slot. This action will replace the Configuration that was in the Current slot, redirecting all your traffic to the newly pushed Configuration as soon as the Deployment is complete.

Important: Lumen doesn’t recommend this deployment method, as it increases production deployment risks.

Direct production deployment

Production Properties - Property Registry

The Lumen CDN receives all CDN property settings as a collection, via the configuration deployment process. Upon success, the properties contained in the configurations are added to the property registry. Each CDN property that is added is active by default and ready to affect edge traffic. Properties are never deleted, but they can be deactivated by re-deploying a configuration that does not contain a property that is already in the registry. The property registry is displayed on the lower portion of “production” page.

Binding Traffic to the Lumen Edge - Production CNAMES

In order to bind traffic domains to the Lumen CDN edge domains, you’ll need to create DNS CNAME records in your DNS system for Primary Aliases of your active properties.

CNAME stands for Canonical Name Record and is a type of resource record in the Domain Name System that maps one domain name to another. Each time a configuration is deployed to a production slot, CNAMES are created for all new properties. To ensure you have the correct CNAME, Visit the "CNAME" table found in the lower portion of "Production" tab's landing page.

 

Learn more about making DNS changes

Transaction History - Deployment Transaction History

Each time you deploy to production, the “environment” version for the deployment slot is increased by 1. Note that this is different than the configuration version. We also keep transaction records for all production operations. Each deployment causes a transaction record to be created, uniquely identified by a transaction ID. Visit the "Environment History" page to to become more familiar with environment versions and transactions.

Deployment FAQs

How long do deployments take?

 

Deployments take roughly 10 minutes to fully distribute the property settings and the timing varies depending on the size and complexity of the configuration.

 

I am seeing issues caused by the changes I am introducing in the candidate slot, what should I do?

 

Reduce the traffic to 0% or delete the slot. This change typically takes less than a minute to complete.

 

How do I know the status of a deployment?

 

Deployment status and slot states are displayed prominently on the top of the “production” page.

 

Is it possible to set up automatic staging increments for specified time intervals?

 

At this time, staged activation is manual, however you are welcome to use our API [link] to create outcomes that best support your company’s needs.

 

What if a deployment fails?

 

If a deployed results in error, the configuration it was replaced will be reinstated automatically

 

How do I roll back a deployment?

 

To roll back a configuration, simply deploy a previous version of a configuration. You can the last most recent or any older configuration as desired. Using the transaction history to see past deployments and the configurations deployed to support your rollback.