Platform updates and patches: how online casino stability is ensured

Introduction

Regular updates and emergency patches are needed to fix bugs, fix vulnerabilities, and add functionality. Under the conditions of the online casino platform, any failures are unacceptable - downtime leads to loss of income and reputation. Therefore, the update release process is built around automation, predictability, and controlled egress.

1. Versioning and artifacts

Semantic Versioning (SemVer): MAJOR. MINOR. PATCH - a clear separation by compatibility and degree of change.
Build Artifacts: Docker images, binaries and migrations are stored in an artifact repository (Artifactory, Nexus) with version labels.
Immutable Releases: collected artifacts are immutable - a new patch always creates a new build.

2. CI/CD-pipeline

1. Assembly and testing:

Unit and integration tests are run on each commit.
Security-scan dependencies (Snyk, OWASP).
Smoke tests on staging.

2. Deployment automation:

With the branch'release/x. y'artefact automatically enters staging → after manual approval in production.
GitOps (Argo CD/Flux) synchronizes Helm/Kustomize manifests from Git.

3. Database migrations:

Managed as code (Flyway, Liquibase).
CI checks the dry-run of the migration to the staging database.
In production, migrations are launched in transactions or through the rolling-schema mechanism.

3. Deploy strategies

1. Canary Release:

5% of traffic goes to a new release, monitoring errors and metrics, then a gradual increase to 100%.

2. Blue-Green Deployment:

Two identical environments (Blue and Green). The new release rolls out into the green, switching routing at one point.
Fast rollback by returning to the previous color.

3. Feature Flags:

New features are disabled by default. Activated through flags after a successful basic deploy without restarting.

4. Critical Component Updates

Security Patches:

When a vulnerability is detected (CVE), dependencies are updated, a patch is built, an automatic canary-deployment.
SLA-oriented timeline: P1 patches should hit production within 24 hours.

RNG and payment modules:

Updates undergo an additional level of audit and registration testing on the provider's sandbox environment.

5. Test and pre-production environments

Staging ≈ Production:

Identical configuration: Kubernetes manifests, secrets and resource limits.

Load-testing before release:

Peak load scripts (flash spins, mass registrations) and autoscaling check.

Chaos Testing:

Chaos Mesh injectors to test the robustness of the new code to network and node failures.

6. Post-Deploy Monitoring and Validation

Health metrics:

Automatic comparison of p95/p99 latency and error-rate before and after release.

Alerting:

Immediate alerts when regressing key indicators (> 10% growth 5xx or> 20% delay).

Post-deploy Smoke Checks:

Automated scripts: login, spin, deposit, output - are executed immediately after switching traffic.

7. Rollback and incident management

Automatic Rollback:

If the error thresholds are exceeded, the CI/CD rolls back the manifests to the previous version.

Runbook’ы:

Documented steps to quickly restore workspaces include the kubectl and SQL rollback commands.

Post-mortem:

Analysis of the causes of release incidents, updating tests and runbooks, publication of RCA reports.

8. Maintenance and scheduled maintenance

Maintenance Windows:

Announced in advance when short-term maintenance work is possible (database migration, kernel update).

Read-only mode:

If it is necessary to migrate the scheme, the platform goes into read-only mode for a couple of minutes without complete downtime.

Communication:

Players are notified through banner in UI and push notifications 24 hours and 1 hour before the start of work.

Conclusion