Rollback

Definitions

1. Rollback is the process of reverting a system, database, or deployment to a previous known-good state after a failed update, bug, or incident. In database systems, rollback undoes an incomplete or failed transaction to maintain data consistency, a key part of ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) properties. In deployment, rollback means switching production back to the previous version of an application when a new release causes problems. Deployment rollback strategies include redeploying the previous artifact, switching load balancer targets in blue-green deployments, reverting feature flags, and restoring database backups. Effective rollback capability requires maintaining previous deployment artifacts, having automated rollback procedures, and designing database migrations to be reversible. The speed of rollback is a critical operational metric: the faster a team can roll back, the lower the blast radius of a bad deployment. Immutable infrastructure and container-based deployments have made rollbacks more reliable by treating deployments as discrete, swappable units rather than incremental changes to running systems.

   In plain English: Going back to the previous version of software after a new update causes problems — the 'undo' button for deployments.

Related Terms

• Ship It
• Friday Deploy
• Dumpster Fire
• Hotfix
• Sandbox Culture
• Boot Loop
• Hard Reset
• Nuke and Pave