AWS DevOps Engineer Professional Practice Test

Which deployment strategy must use an externally managed RDS instance to prevent data loss?

1. Canary deployment strategy

2. Blue/Green deployment strategy

3. Rolling deployment strategy

4. Immutable deployment strategy

The correct answer is: Blue/Green deployment strategy

The blue/green deployment strategy involves maintaining two separate environments that run simultaneously: one is the "blue" environment (the current production version), and the other is the "green" environment (the new version to be deployed). By managing the environments this way, you can switch traffic from the blue to the green environment once the new version is thoroughly tested and deemed stable. Using an externally managed RDS instance with a blue/green deployment helps prevent data loss because the database, which often holds critical data, remains separate from the application deployment process. When transitioning from blue to green, if the RDS instance is external and shared, the database can remain operational and unaffected by the deployment lifecycle. This external management allows for seamless data continuity and minimizes the risk of incurring data loss that could happen with database migrations or schema changes occurring simultaneously with application updates. This strategy also provides a quick rollback mechanism, as switching back to the blue environment is just a matter of routing traffic back, without impacting the database state. In contrast, the other deployment strategies may not offer the same level of protection against data loss during the transition. For example, canary deployments roll out changes to a small subset of users, which could complicate database adaptations. Rolling deployments involve gradual