Here is a suggested answer to the DevOps interview question "How have you handled failed deployments?":
Handling Failed Deployments
When a deployment fails, it's critical to act quickly to identify the root cause, mitigate any issues, and get the system back online as soon as possible. Here are the key steps I follow when handling a failed deployment:
1. Assess the Situation
Determine the scope of the failure - is it impacting the entire system or just certain components?
Identify any error messages or logs that provide clues about what went wrong.
Assess the business impact and urgency of restoring service.
2. Rollback or Rollforward
If the failure is isolated and the previous version is stable, perform an immediate rollback to restore service.
If the failure is more complex, consider rolling forward with a fix. But only if you are highly confident it will resolve the issue.
3. Investigate the Root Cause
Dive into the deployment logs, application logs, and monitoring data to pinpoint the root cause.
Reproduce the failure in a test environment if possible.
Determine if the issue was caused by the code, infrastructure, config...
