Hi,
We use auto-deploy to make sure that new AWS auto-scaled machines get the current release. We however see strange results when a previous deployment has used guided failure mode, seemingly these auto-deployed machines enter a failure guidance mode when they have deployment issues which blocks any further auto deploy triggers and hence any auto scaling events. This seems to happen regardless of the failure guidance mode for the environment.
The scenario is that a careful developer has pushed a release in guided failure mode so that they can shepherd the release through if necessary. Some time later an auto-trigger deploy fails because some other reason (in our case it seemed like some octopus tentacle upgrade blocked a deploy somehow). Our auto-deploy failures are ultimately recoverable because we use ASG lifecycle hooks. All subsequent deploys including auto-deploys are blocked, those machines will get terminated automatically by the ASG.
Is this behaviour expected? I would think that releases from auto deploy triggers should never be in guided failure mode as the humans are in bed.
Thanks for getting in touch. Yes the behavior is expected, the reasoning behind it is; a deployment was made, guided failure was chosen and is attached as a property on that specific deployment. If that deployment happens again all we have to go on is that information, so guided failure triggers again.
What it sounds like you’re asking is an extra option, Guided Failure but NOT when triggered by auto-deploy. We currently don’t have an easy way to implement that change, so all I can suggest is raise it on the community UserVoice so we can gauge how much demand there is for such a feature: https://octopusdeploy.uservoice.com/
The only work around we can think of is once it is deployed with guided failure on, if possible deploy again to the current machines with a new deployment (if your application and infrastructure allows it), then that will be the latest deployment without the guided failure flag attached that deployment will be triggered in an automatic way.