Releasing

This document lists the steps to follow to perform a release. For more information on Releases in Facets, see Releases.

How to Perform a Release in Facets?

Releasing is a two-step flow. Step 1 is where you choose what to release and how; step 2 is a review of exactly what will change. The drawer header tracks where you are, reading Step 1 of 2 or Step 2 of 2 above a progress bar that fills as you advance. When you arrive by retrying or repeating an earlier release it reads Retry Release or Repeat Release instead, and when you are applying a saved plan it reads Apply Full Plan, Apply Selective Plan, or Apply Rollback Plan.

1. Open Projects and select the required Project.
2. Select the Environments tab and select the desired Environment.
3. Click Release.
4. Under Release type, choose Full Release, Selective, or Custom. Expand Advance settings & comments to set the advanced toggles and add a comment.
5. For Selective, use Group by to list resources by Resource Type or Resource Group, then pick the resources or groups you want to deploy.
6. For Custom, add the commands to run, editing or deleting them as needed.
7. Finish step 1 with one of the buttons in the footer. Which ones you see depends on the release type:
   • Plan (Full and Selective only) creates a Terraform plan and closes the flow without changing anything. You apply that saved plan later from Apply Plan in the release history, which asks you to Confirm.
   • Review release (Full and Selective) moves you to step 2. It does not deploy anything on its own.
   • Apply (Custom only) runs the release immediately. A Custom release has no Plan button and no review step.
   • When you reached the drawer by retrying or repeating an earlier release, the primary button reads Retry or Repeat instead of Review release.
8. On step 2, the Review resources table lists every resource the release touches, split into Affected Resources and No change. Expand a row to see the attribute-level diff, with Old Value and New Value columns for artifact, blueprint commit, and override changes, and a Compare link for a side-by-side view. Each affected resource is tagged Create, Destroy, or Modify. The advanced toggles you set in step 1 are echoed here read-only.
9. Click Release to deploy, Back to return to step 1, or Cancel to abandon the release.

Advance settings & comments

The Advance settings & comments section is available for all release types. It is expanded by default for a Full Release and collapsed for Selective and Custom.

The advanced toggles are:

• Refresh: When enabled, the release will detect any infrastructure drifts and update resource information in the backed-up database.
• Force: Runs the release even if Facets detects no pending changes for the environment. Useful for re-applying an unchanged blueprint, for example to recover from a partially-applied or drifted state.
• Allow destructive action: Lets the release destroy protected resources such as databases, Kubernetes clusters, and node groups, which modules guard with a Terraform prevent_destroy lifecycle rule. Facets gates it behind a separate permission, granted per release type.

The same section carries an optional Comment field, which is recorded against the release.

Understand the impact of these toggles before enabling them, as they can change what a release is allowed to do to the environment.