Guarded rollouts

Overview

This topic explains how to use metrics with guarded rollouts to monitor the performance of flag releases and configure LaunchDarkly to take action on the results.

When you begin serving a new flag variation, such as when you toggle a flag on or update the default rule variation, you can select to add a guarded rollout. A guarded rollout progressively increases traffic to the new variation over time while monitoring chosen metrics for regressions, until 100% of your audience is receiving the new variation. If LaunchDarkly detects a regression before you reach 100%, it can stop the release and send you a notification.

Guarded rollouts are one of several options that LaunchDarkly provides to help you release features to production safely and gradually. To learn about other options for releasing features, read Releasing features with LaunchDarkly.

View flags with guarded rollouts

To view a list of flags that are currently using or have previously used a guarded rollout, click Guarded rollouts in the left nav. Hover on a flag’s heart icon to view more information about the guarded rollout:

You can use the Filters menu to filter the list by rollout status. Navigate to the flag’s Monitoring tab to view and manage the rollout.

You can create a guarded rollout on any flag targeting rule, as long as there are no other guarded rollouts, progressive rollouts, or experiments running on the flag and the flag is not a migration flag.

Metrics and guarded rollouts

You can use metrics to track a variety of system health indicators and end-user behaviors, from engineering metrics like errors and latencies, to product metrics like clicks and conversions. When you combine metrics with a flag change to create a guarded rollout, you can monitor how your flag change impacts those metrics.

You can connect metrics to LaunchDarkly using any of the following methods:

• Use one of our metrics integrations
• Call the metric import API
• Use a LaunchDarkly SDK to send custom events, and connect them to metrics
• Enable OpenTelemetry in a LaunchDarkly SDK, send the OpenTelemetry traces to LaunchDarkly, and connect them to metrics

To learn more, read Metrics.

Regressions

When you attach metrics to a flag and then start a guarded rollout, LaunchDarkly detects if the change is having a negative impact on your app or audience. This negative effect is called a “regression.” You can configure LaunchDarkly to either notify you of the regression, or notify you of the regression as well as automatically roll back the release.