ARCHIVED from builddistributedsystem.com on 2026-04-28 — URL: https://builddistributedsystem.com/tracks/migrator/tasks/task-25-1-5-rollback-strategies
TASK

Implementation

When a migration goes wrong in production, you need a rollback plan. Different situations call for different strategies: instant feature flag disables for behavioural changes, blue-green traffic switch for deployment issues, migration down() functions for schema changes, and database restore for catastrophic data corruption.

Implement a node that supports four rollback strategies:

// 1. Migration rollback: run down() for version 3
{ "type": "rollback", "msg_id": 1, "version": 3 }
-> { "type": "rollback_complete", "in_reply_to": 1,
    "rolled_back_from": 3, "rolled_back_to": 2,
    "duration_seconds": 5 }

// 2. Feature flag rollback: disable instantly
{ "type": "disable_feature", "msg_id": 2,
  "feature": "new_checkout" }
-> { "type": "feature_disabled", "in_reply_to": 2,
    "feature": "new_checkout", "rolled_back_instant": true }

// 3. Blue-green: switch traffic back to the previous environment
{ "type": "switch_traffic", "msg_id": 3,
  "from": "green", "to": "blue" }
-> { "type": "traffic_switched", "in_reply_to": 3,
    "current_environment": "blue", "downtime_seconds": 0 }

// 4. Restore from backup (last resort)
{ "type": "restore", "msg_id": 4,
  "backup": "users_backup_20240115" }
-> { "type": "restore_complete", "in_reply_to": 4,
    "restored_rows": 100000, "duration_seconds": 60 }

Sample Test Cases

Rollback migrationTimeout: 5000ms
Input
{
  "src": "admin",
  "dest": "migrations",
  "body": {
    "type": "rollback",
    "msg_id": 1,
    "version": 3
  }
}
Expected Output
{"type": "rollback_complete", "in_reply_to": 1, "rolled_back_from": 3, "rolled_back_to": 2, "duration_seconds": 5}
Feature flag rollbackTimeout: 5000ms
Input
{
  "src": "admin",
  "dest": "features",
  "body": {
    "type": "disable_feature",
    "msg_id": 1,
    "feature": "new_checkout"
  }
}
Expected Output
{"type": "feature_disabled", "in_reply_to": 1, "feature": "new_checkout", "rolled_back_instant": true}

Hints

Hint 1
Migration rollback: run the down() function for the target version
Hint 2
Feature flag rollback: disable the flag instantly without a deployment
Hint 3
Blue-green: two identical environments; switch traffic from green back to blue in seconds
Hint 4
Database restore is the last resort: restore from a pre-migration backup
Hint 5
Rollback strategies range from instant (feature flag) to slow (database restore)
OVERVIEW

Theoretical Hub

Concept overview coming soon

Key Concepts

migration rollbackfeature flagsblue-green deploymentdatabase restoreinstant rollback
main.py
python
Implement Migration Rollback Strategies - The Migrator | Build Distributed Systems