Production Deployment Guide¶

Status: 📝 Documentation in progress

Best practices for deploying Seeknal pipelines to production environments.

Overview¶

Deploying data pipelines to production requires careful planning, testing, and monitoring. This guide covers the end-to-end production deployment process for Seeknal pipelines.

Pre-Deployment Checklist¶

1. Pipeline Validation¶

Before deploying, validate your pipeline:

# Parse and validate configuration
seeknal parse

# Plan deployment to see what will change
seeknal plan prod

# Dry-run to preview execution
seeknal run --dry-run

2. Data Quality Checks¶

# Run data quality audits
seeknal audit

# Validate feature data (for feature groups)
seeknal validate-features user_features --mode fail

3. Environment Setup¶

# List available environments
seeknal env list

# Create production environment configuration
seeknal plan prod

Deployment Strategies¶

Virtual Environments (Recommended)¶

Use virtual environments to isolate development and production:

# 1. Create production environment plan
seeknal plan prod

# 2. Review the plan
seeknal env plan prod

# 3. Apply in isolated environment
seeknal env apply prod --dry-run

# 4. Execute production deployment
seeknal env apply prod

Benefits: - Safe testing before production deployment - Rollback capability - Change tracking and categorization

Direct Deployment¶

For simpler deployments, you can deploy directly:

# Deploy to production
seeknal run --env prod

Change Categorization¶

Seeknal automatically categorizes changes by impact:

Category	Description	Example
Breaking	Requires manual intervention	Schema changes, dropped columns
Non-Breaking	Safe to deploy	New features, performance improvements
Additive	Expands functionality	New sources, transforms

Review changes before deployment:

seeknal plan prod

Production Best Practices¶

1. Use Source Control¶

# Version control your pipeline definitions
git add seeknal/
git commit -m "Deploy v2.0 to production"
git tag production-v2.0

2. Implement Monitoring¶

# Monitor pipeline runs
seeknal logs --pipeline orders_pipeline --tail 50

# Check recent executions
seeknal status

3. Set Up Alerts¶

Configure alerts for: - Pipeline failures - Data quality issues - Performance degradation - Data freshness checks

4. Schedule Regular Runs¶

# pipelines/scheduled_orders.yaml
schedule:
  cron: "*/15 * * * *"  # Every 15 minutes
  timezone: UTC

# Deploy scheduled pipeline
seeknal apply pipelines/scheduled_orders.yaml

5. Implement Rollback Procedures¶

# List feature group versions
seeknal version list user_features

# Rollback to previous version
seeknal materialize user_features --start-date 2024-01-01 --version 1

# Rollback environment changes
seeknal env rollback prod

Production Considerations¶

Performance¶

Aspect	Recommendation
Incremental Processing	Use CDC to only process new data
Parallel Execution	Enable `--parallel` for independent nodes
Resource Limits	Set `--max-workers` based on available CPU

Security¶

Aspect	Recommendation
Credentials	Use environment variables, never commit secrets
Storage Paths	Use secure paths (not `/tmp`)
Access Control	Limit who can promote to production

Reliability¶

Aspect	Recommendation
Idempotency	Ensure operations can be safely retried
Validation	Run data quality checks before and after
Monitoring	Track pipeline health metrics

Troubleshooting Production Issues¶

Pipeline Failures¶

# Check logs
seeknal logs --pipeline <name> --tail 100

# View recent status
seeknal status

# Validate configuration
seeknal validate

Data Quality Issues¶

# Run diagnostics
seeknal audit <node>

# Validate features
seeknal validate-features <feature_group> --verbose

Performance Issues¶

# Check execution plan
seeknal plan prod

# Enable parallel execution
seeknal env apply prod --parallel

Virtual Environments — Isolate dev and prod
Change Categorization — Understanding change impact
Incident Management — Handling production issues

CLI Commands Reference¶

# Environment Management
seeknal env plan <env>          # Preview changes
seeknal env apply <env>         # Execute deployment
seeknal env promote <from> <to> # Promote environments
seeknal env list               # List all environments
seeknal env delete <env>        # Delete environment

# Change Management
seeknal plan                    # Show changes since last run
seeknal promote                 # Promote changes to production

# Monitoring
seeknal logs                    # View pipeline logs
seeknal status                  # Check system status
seeknal audit                   # Run data quality audits

Coming soon: Advanced deployment patterns, blue-green deployments, and canary release strategies.