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Traffic Splitting

Traffic splitting enables gradual rollouts, canary deployments, and blue-green releases by distributing requests across multiple backends.

Use Cases​

  • Canary Deployments: Send a small percentage to a new version
  • Blue-Green: Switch between production environments
  • A/B Testing: Route traffic to different variants

Weighted Backends​

In the route builder, open the Traffic tab and set the Route Type to Forward to Backend. Under Backend Services, add two or more backends. For each backend, keep the Role set to Primary and set its Weight between 0 and 100. The weights across primary backends should total 100%.

For example, add api-v1 with Weight 90 and api-v2 with Weight 10:

  • 90% of traffic goes to stable (v1)
  • 10% of traffic goes to canary (v2)

Each backend can be a Kubernetes Service (select the namespace, service, and port) or an External Service. For an external backend, set the Backend Type to External Service, choose the Address Type (FQDN or IP Address), and enter the Address and Port.

Gradual Rollout Strategy​

  1. Start with 1-5% to the canary
  2. Monitor error rates and latency
  3. Increase the weight incrementally (10%, 25%, 50%)
  4. Complete the rollout at 100%

Enable Health Checks in the Backend Traffic Policy section to automatically remove unhealthy backends from rotation.

The REST API equivalent is documented in the API Reference.