Aug 16, 2025·7 min
Rollback drill playbook: restore a broken release in 5 minutes
Use this rollback drill to rehearse restoring a broken release in 5 minutes: what to snapshot, what to verify, and who clicks what during the drill.
Use this rollback drill to rehearse restoring a broken release in 5 minutes: what to snapshot, what to verify, and who clicks what during the drill.
A release can look fine in testing, then break in the first five minutes of real traffic. The scary part usually isn't the bug. It's the uncertainty: what changed, what you can safely undo, and whether a rollback will make things worse.
Right after a release, failures are often simple and painfully visible. A new button might crash the page on mobile. A backend change might return the wrong data shape, so checkout fails. A small config tweak can break login, emails, or payments. Even when the fix is easy, pressure spikes because users are watching and every minute feels expensive.
Panic starts when the rollback path is unclear. People ask the same questions at the same time: Do we have a snapshot? Which version was last good? If we roll back the app, what about the database? Who has access to do it? When those answers aren't already written down, the team burns time debating instead of restoring service.
Guessing during an incident has a real cost. You lose time, users lose confidence, and rushed changes can cause a second outage on top of the first. Engineers also get pulled in too many directions at once: debugging, messaging, and decision-making.
A practice run changes the mood because it replaces uncertainty with muscle memory. A good rollback drill isn't just "can we revert code." It's a repeatable routine: what you snapshot, what you restore, what you verify, and who is allowed to act. After a few drills, rollback stops feeling like a failure and starts feeling like a safety tool.
If your deployment setup already supports snapshots and restore (some platforms, including Koder.ai, build this into the release flow), drills get easier because "go back to known good" is a normal action, not a custom emergency procedure. Either way, the goal is the same: when the moment comes, nobody should be improvising.
“Restore in 5 minutes” doesn't mean everything is perfect again. It means you can get users back to a working version quickly, even if the new release is still broken.
Service first, fixes later. If you can restore service quickly, you buy calm time to find the real bug.
The clock starts when you agree: “We are rolling back.” It doesn't include a long discussion about whether things might recover on their own.
Decide your rollback trigger ahead of time. For example: “If checkout errors stay above X% for 3 minutes after deploy, we roll back.” When the trigger hits, you follow the script.
“Restored” should be a small set of signals that tell you users are safe and the system is stable. Keep it tight and easy to check:
When those signals look good, stop the 5-minute timer. Everything else can wait.
To keep the drill honest, explicitly mark what you're not doing during the 5-minute path: deep debugging, code changes or hotfix releases, and anything that turns into engineering work.
A rollback only feels fast when the decision is mostly pre-made. Pick one approach that works for most incidents, then practice it until it's boring.
Your drill should answer four questions:
Rollback is best when the new release is actively harming users or data, and you already have a known good version to return to. A hotfix is best when the impact is small, the change is isolated, and you're confident you can patch safely.
A simple default works well: if users can't complete the main action (checkout, login, signup) or error rates spike, roll back first and fix forward later. Save hotfixes for issues that are annoying but not dangerous.
Your “target” should be something your team can select quickly, without debate. Most teams end up with three common targets:
If you have reliable deployment snapshots, make that the default because it's the most repeatable under pressure. Keep config-only rollback as a separate path for cases where the code is fine but a setting is wrong.
Also define what counts as “previous good.” It should be the most recent release that completed monitoring checks and had no active incident, not “the one people remember.”
Don't wait for a meeting during an incident. Write down the triggers that start a rollback and stick to them. Typical triggers include a broken main flow for more than a couple of minutes, error rate or latency crossing agreed thresholds, data risk (wrong writes, duplicate charges), and any security or privacy concern introduced by the release.
Then decide who can approve the rollback. Pick one role (incident lead or on-call), plus a backup. Everyone else can advise, but they can't block. When the trigger hits and the approver says “rollback,” the team runs the same steps every time.
A rollback drill only works if you can return to a known good state quickly. Snapshots aren't just “nice to have.” They're the receipts that prove what was running, what changed, and how to get back.
Before every release, make sure you can grab these items without searching chat logs:
Database safety is the usual trap. A fast app rollback doesn't help if the database now expects the new schema. For risky migrations, plan a two-step release (add new fields first, start using them later) so rollback stays possible.
Use one naming rule everywhere, and make it sortable:
prod-2026-01-09-1420-v1.8.3-commitA1B2C3
Include environment, timestamp, version, and commit. If your tools support snapshots in a UI, use the same naming rule there so anyone can locate the right restore point during an incident.
A rollback drill is faster and calmer when everyone knows their lane. The goal isn't “everyone jump in.” It's one person making decisions, one person doing the action, one person confirming it worked, and one person keeping others informed.
For small and mid-size teams, these roles work well (one person can wear two hats if needed, but avoid combining Deployer and Verifier during the drill):
Permissions decide whether this plan is real or just a nice document. Before the drill, agree on who is allowed to roll back production, and how emergencies work.
A simple setup:
If you're using a platform that supports snapshots and rollback (including Koder.ai), decide who can create snapshots, who can restore them, and where that action is recorded.
A rollback drill works best when it feels like a fire drill: same steps, same words, same places to click. The goal isn't perfection. It's that anyone on call can restore the last known good version quickly, without debating options.
Pick one clear trigger and say it out loud when the drill begins. Examples: “Checkout returns 500 for more than 1 minute” or “Error rate is 5x normal right after deploy.” Saying it out loud prevents the team from drifting into troubleshooting mode.
Keep a short prep checklist next to the runbook:
Start the timer. One person states the trigger and the decision: “We are rolling back now.”
Freeze changes. Pause new deploys and stop non-essential edits that could change the system mid-rollback.
Take a last-chance snapshot (only if safe and fast). This is protection in case you need to recreate the broken state later. Name it clearly and move on.
Run the rollback action exactly as documented. Don't improvise. Read confirmation prompts out loud so the recorder can capture what happened.
Confirm the rollback completed in one trusted place. Use one screen and one signal every time (deployment history view, “current version” label, or a clear status indicator).
Right after the action, capture what matters while it's fresh:
If the rollback takes longer than 5 minutes, don't explain it away. Find the slow step, fix the runbook, and run the drill again.
A rollback only “worked” when users feel it worked. You're not trying to prove the old version is deployed. You're proving the service is usable again and stable.
Keep verification small and repeatable. If the list is longer than five, people will skip it when stress is high.
Use checks you can run fast, with a clear pass/fail:
After functional checks, glance at the simplest system health signal you trust. You want to see error rate drop back to normal and latency stop spiking within a couple of minutes.
Also confirm the less visible parts are moving again. Background jobs should be processing and queues should be draining, not growing. Database checks should be quick and boring: connections stable, no obvious lock pileups, and the app can write.
Finally, test the outside world where it matters. If you can do it safely, run a payment test, confirm email delivery isn't bouncing, and make sure webhooks are being accepted (or at least not failing).
Pre-write one sentence so nobody improvises:
“Rollback complete. Core flows verified (login + checkout). Error rate and latency back to normal. Monitoring for 30 minutes. Next update at 14:30.”
It’s 10:02 on a Tuesday. A new release goes out, and within a minute a slice of users can't log in. Some get “invalid session,” others see a spinner that never ends. Signups still work, so the issue is easy to miss at first.
The first signal usually isn't a dramatic outage. It's a quiet spike: support tickets, a dip in successful logins, and a few angry messages from real users. On-call sees an alert for “login success rate down 18% in 5 minutes,” and support posts: “3 users can’t log in after the update.”
Because the team has practiced the drill, they don't debate for long. They confirm, decide, and act.
What gets rolled back: application code and config for the web and API services. What stays as-is: database and user data.
If the release included a database migration, the drill rule is simple: never roll back the database in the 5-minute path. Keep migrations backward compatible, or pause and get a second set of eyes before deploying.
During rollback, the incident lead posts short updates every couple of minutes: what users see, what action is happening, and when the next update is. Example: “We are rolling back the last release to restore login. Next update in 2 minutes.”
After rollback, they close the loop: “Login is back to normal. Root cause review is in progress. We will share what happened and what we changed to prevent repeats.”
A rollback drill should feel boring. If it feels stressful, the drill is probably exposing real gaps: access, missing snapshots, or steps that only exist in someone’s head.
You practice with assumed access, not real permissions. People discover mid-incident they can't deploy, can't change config, or can't reach dashboards. Fix: run the drill with the same accounts and roles you'd use during an incident.
Snapshots exist, but they're incomplete or hard to find. Teams snapshot the app but forget env changes, feature flags, or routing. Or the snapshot name is meaningless. Fix: make snapshot creation a release step with a naming rule and verify during drills that the snapshot is visible and restorable quickly.
Database migrations make rollback unsafe. A backwards-incompatible schema change turns a quick rollback into a data problem. Fix: prefer additive migrations. If a breaking change is unavoidable, plan a forward fix and label the release clearly: “rollback allowed: yes/no.”
You declare success before checking what users feel. The app deploys, but login is still broken or jobs are stuck. Fix: keep verification short but real, and timebox it.
The drill is too complex to repeat. Too many tools, too many checks, too many voices. Fix: shrink the drill to one page and one owner. If it can't be done from a single runbook and a single communication channel, it won't happen under pressure.
A good rollback drill is a habit, not a heroic performance. If you can't finish calmly, remove steps until you can, then add only what genuinely reduces risk.
A rollback drill works best when everyone follows the same one-page checklist. Keep it pinned where your team actually looks.
A compact version you can run in under 10 minutes (including setup and verification):
Run drills often enough that the steps feel normal. Monthly is a good default. If your product changes daily, run every two weeks, but keep verification focused on the top user path.
After each drill, update the runbook the same day while it's fresh. Store it with release notes, and add a dated “last tested” line so nobody trusts a stale procedure.
Measure only what helps you improve:
If your team builds on Koder.ai, treat snapshots and rollback as part of the habit: name snapshots consistently, rehearse restores in the same interface you'll use on-call, and include quick custom-domain and integration checks in the verifier steps. Mentioning this in the runbook keeps the drill aligned with how you actually ship.
A rollback drill is a practice run where you simulate a bad release and follow a written routine to restore the last known-good version.
The goal isn’t to “debug fast”—it’s to make restoring service repeatable and calm under pressure.
Use a pre-set trigger so you don’t debate in the moment. Common defaults:
If the trigger hits, roll back first, then investigate after users are safe.
It means you can get users back onto a working version quickly—even if the new release is still broken.
In practice, “restored” is when a small set of signals look healthy again (core user action works, error rate and latency return near normal, no crash loop).
Pick a target you can select in seconds, without discussion:
Define “previous good” as the most recent release with normal monitoring and no active incident—not the one people remember.
At minimum, capture these before every release:
Database changes are the common trap—an app rollback may not work if the schema isn’t compatible.
Name them so they sort and can be found fast, for example:
prod-YYYY-MM-DD-HHMM-vX.Y.Z-commitABC123Include environment + timestamp + version + commit. Consistency matters more than the exact format.
A simple, repeatable split for small teams:
Avoid having the Deployer also be the Verifier during drills; you want an independent “did it really work?” check.
Keep it tiny and pass/fail. Good must-pass checks include:
Then confirm error rate and latency settle back near normal, and queues/jobs aren’t backing up.
Don’t make “rollback the database” part of the 5-minute path. Instead:
This keeps the quick rollback path safe and predictable.
If your platform supports snapshots and restore as part of the release flow, drills get easier because “go back to known good” is a normal action.
On Koder.ai specifically, decide ahead of time:
The drill still needs roles, triggers, and a short verification list—tools don’t replace the routine.