In a canary deployment, which action signals readiness to progress toward full production deployment?

• A. The canary has not received any data in 24 hours.
• B. Canary metrics meet predefined thresholds and no critical issues.
• C. The deployment window ends.
• D. The majority of users complain.

Answer: (A)

In a canary deployment, you release the new version to a small subset of users and monitor real-world performance and reliability before expanding. The strongest signal to move toward full production is that the monitored metrics meet predefined thresholds and there are no critical issues detected. This shows the new release behaves as expected under real load and with the observed traffic, giving confidence to scale up the rollout.

Choosing not to receive data for a day doesn’t provide evidence of stability or performance; it could mean there’s no traffic or a data collection problem, which is not a reliable signal of readiness. Ending the deployment window is a scheduling boundary, not an indicator of readiness. And widespread user complaints point to problems that would require investigation or rollback, not approval to proceed.