Rollbacks

In the world of infrastructure as code, mistakes or unintended consequences can sometimes occur when applying changes to your infrastructure. When this happens, it’s essential to have a reliable and efficient way to roll back those changes and restore your infrastructure to a previous stable state. You can easily perform rollbacks by leveraging GitHub’s pull request functionality and Terrateam’s plan and apply workflows.

Understanding Rollbacks

A rollback is the process of reverting changes made to your infrastructure and returning it to a previous known-good state. In the context of Terrateam and Terraform, a rollback typically involves the following steps:

1. Identify the Pull Request to Revert

   1. Navigate to your repository.

   2. Click on “Pull requests”.

   3. Select the pull request that introduced the undesired changes.

2. Create a New Pull Request with Reverted Changes

   1. Scroll to the bottom of the selected pull request.

   2. Click on Revert.

3. Execute Terrateam Plan

   1. Wait for the Terrateam plan to execute.

4. Review the Terrateam Plan Output

   1. Assess the output and the potential impact of the rollback.

5. Apply the Rollback

   1. Comment terrateam apply to initiate the rollback process using Terrateam.

By following these steps, you can effectively undo the changes made by a previous pull request and restore your infrastructure to its previous state.

Best Practices

To ensure smooth and effective rollbacks with Terrateam, consider the following best practices:

• Regularly review and test your Terraform code changes before merging them into your main branch. This helps catch potential issues early and reduces the likelihood of needing a rollback.
• Use descriptive and meaningful titles and descriptions for your pull requests, making it easier to identify and track changes over time.
• Use version control best practices, such as branching and tagging, to maintain a clear history of your infrastructure changes and facilitate rollbacks.