Using best practices in your data tier with blue/green deployments
One of the more significant risks that can be present when deploying a newer version of an application is making changes to the database. This is especially true when performing blue/green deployments since the whole point of them is to mitigate risk and create the ability to roll back quickly.
If you are using Amazon RDS, it is a good idea to create a snapshot of your database prior to starting your deployment if you are going to be performing any database changes. This will allow you to restore from that snapshot if the data deployment doesn't go as planned and have as little downtime as possible.
Separating schema changes from code changes
When performing deployments, it is vitally important to separate any database changes, such as schema changes, from the application deployment. The order in which you perform some of the database updates may depend on what type of schema changes you are performing...
