Thank You to AWS Solutions Architect Junseok Oh

I understand you're expressing gratitude to AWS Solutions Architect Junseok Oh for helping your team implement a Canary deployment strategy in a Kubernetes environment within a closed financial network.

Canary deployments are indeed a more risk-averse deployment strategy compared to traditional approaches. They involve a phased approach where traffic is shifted to a new version of an application in increments. Initially, a small percentage of traffic (the "canary group") is directed to the new version to test it. If successful, the remaining traffic is gradually shifted to the new version.

Canary deployments can be implemented in two ways:

1. Two-step approach: The new application code is deployed and exposed for testing, and upon acceptance, it's rolled out to the rest of the environment.
2. Linear approach: Traffic is incrementally increased to the new version until all traffic flows to the new release.

While I don't have specific information about the Argo Rollouts + Istio combination mentioned in your message, these are common tools used in Kubernetes environments for implementing advanced deployment strategies like canary deployments.

The benefits of canary deployments include reduced risk, as issues can be detected early with minimal impact, and the ability to gradually validate new versions with real user traffic before full deployment.

I appreciate your sharing this positive experience with AWS support, and I'm glad to hear that the assistance provided helped your team gain confidence and understanding of advanced Kubernetes deployment patterns.
Sources
Canary deployments - Overview of Deployment Options on AWS