FF historical_add_on_assigned_users_enabled: Controlling Historical AddOn Assignments CH & PG endpoint's data

Summary

This issue is to roll out Historical Addon Assignment History on production, that is currently behind the historical_add_on_assigned_users_enabled feature flag.

Plan for release:

  • Toggled: %18.5
  • Default enabled: %18.5(If after toggling we find no issues)
  • FF Removal %18.6

Owners

Expectations

What are we expecting to happen?

  • When turned on: Results for historical addon assignments will come from Clickhouse
  • When turned off: Results for historical addon assignments will come from Postgres

What can go wrong and how would we detect it?

  • Records from CH might be inaccurate, so the default is turning this off until we fix any data inconsistency

Rollout Steps

Note: Please make sure to run the chatops commands in the Slack channel that gets impacted by the command.

Rollout on non-production environments

  • Verify the MR with the feature flag is merged to master and has been deployed to non-production environments with /chatops run auto_deploy status d0527d63
  • Enable the feature flag on non-production environments with /chatops run feature set historical_add_on_assigned_users_enabled true --dev --pre --staging --staging-ref
  • Deploy the feature flag at a percentage (recommended percentage: 50%) with /chatops run feature set historical_add_on_assigned_users_enabled 50 --actors --dev --pre --staging --staging-ref
  • Monitor that the error rates did not increase (repeat with a different percentage as necessary).
  • Enable the feature globally on non-production environments with /chatops run feature set historical_add_on_assigned_users_enabled true --dev --pre --staging --staging-ref
  • Verify that the feature works as expected. The best environment to validate the feature in is staging-canary as this is the first environment deployed to. Make sure you are configured to use canary.
  • If the feature flag causes end-to-end tests to fail, disable the feature flag on staging to avoid blocking deployments.
    • See #e2e-run-staging Slack channel and look for the following messages:
      • test kicked off: Feature flag historical_add_on_assigned_users_enabled has been set to true on **gstg**
      • test result: This pipeline was triggered due to toggling of historical_add_on_assigned_users_enabled feature flag

If you encounter end-to-end test failures and are unable to diagnose them, you may reach out to the #s_developer_experience Slack channel for assistance. Note that end-to-end test failures on staging-ref don't block deployments.

Before production rollout

  • If the change is significant and you wanted to announce in #whats-happening-at-gitlab, it best to do it before rollout to gitlab-org/gitlab-com.

Specific rollout on production

For visibility, all /chatops commands that target production must be executed in the #production Slack channel and cross-posted (with the command results) to the responsible team's Slack channel.

  • Ensure that the feature MRs have been deployed to both production and canary with /chatops run auto_deploy status <merge-commit-of-your-feature>
  • Depending on the type of actor you are using, pick one of these options:
    • For project-actor: /chatops run feature set --project=gitlab-org/gitlab,gitlab-org/gitlab-foss,gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com historical_add_on_assigned_users_enabled true
    • For group-actor: /chatops run feature set --group=gitlab-org,gitlab-com historical_add_on_assigned_users_enabled true
    • For user-actor: /chatops run feature set --user=<gitlab-username-of-dri> historical_add_on_assigned_users_enabled true
    • For all internal users: /chatops run feature set --feature-group=gitlab_team_members historical_add_on_assigned_users_enabled true
  • Verify that the feature works for the specific actors.

Preparation before global rollout

  • Set a milestone to this rollout issue to signal for enabling and removing the feature flag when it is stable.
  • Check if the feature flag change needs to be accompanied with a change management issue. Cross link the issue here if it does.
  • Ensure that you or a representative in development can be available for at least 2 hours after feature flag updates in production. If a different developer will be covering, or an exception is needed, please inform the oncall SRE by using the @sre-oncall Slack alias.
  • Ensure that documentation exists for the feature, and the version history text has been updated.
  • Ensure that any breaking changes have been announced following the release post process to ensure GitLab customers are aware.
  • Notify the #support_gitlab-com Slack channel and your team channel (more guidance when this is necessary in the dev docs).

Global rollout on production

For visibility, all /chatops commands that target production must be executed in the #production Slack channel and cross-posted (with the command results) to the responsible team's Slack channel.

Release the feature

After the feature has been deemed stable, the clean up should be done as soon as possible to permanently enable the feature and reduce complexity in the codebase.

You can either create a follow-up issue for Feature Flag Cleanup or use the checklist below in this same issue.

  • Create a merge request to remove the historical_add_on_assigned_users_enabled feature flag. Ask for review/approval/merge as usual. The MR should include the following changes:
    • Remove all references to the feature flag from the codebase.
    • Remove the YAML definitions for the feature from the repository.
  • Ensure that the cleanup MR has been included in the release package. If the merge request was deployed before the monthly release was tagged, the feature can be officially announced in a release blog post: /chatops run release check <merge-request-url> <milestone>
  • Close the feature issue to indicate the feature will be released in the current milestone.
  • Once the cleanup MR has been deployed to production, clean up the feature flag from all environments by running these chatops command in #production channel: /chatops run feature delete historical_add_on_assigned_users_enabled --dev --pre --staging --staging-ref --production
  • Close this rollout issue.

Rollback Steps

  • This feature can be disabled on production by running the following Chatops command:
/chatops run feature set historical_add_on_assigned_users_enabled false
  • Disable the feature flag on non-production environments:
/chatops run feature set historical_add_on_assigned_users_enabled false --dev --pre --staging --staging-ref
  • Delete feature flag from all environments:
/chatops run feature delete historical_add_on_assigned_users_enabled --dev --pre --staging --staging-ref --production
Edited by Amr Taha