In July 2025, AWS announced a powerful update: Amazon ECS now supports built-in blue/green deployments.
This new capability, integrated directly into ECS, allows teams to release application updates with greater confidence — without needing to configure AWS CodeDeploy separately.
Previously, running blue/green deployments in ECS required wiring things up through CodeDeploy, managing IAM roles, and dealing with extra complexity. Now, ECS itself takes care of the heavy lifting: it provisions the new tasks, validates their health, and seamlessly shifts production traffic from the old environment (“blue”) to the new one (“green”).
This is a major simplification for DevOps teams. Instead of juggling multiple services, you can now define your deployment type as blue/green right inside ECS and let it manage the process end-to-end.
What Is Blue/Green Deployment?
Blue/green deployment is a release strategy that uses two identical environments: blue for the current production version and green for the new one. This approach allows zero-downtime switching between versions.
The process is straightforward:
Spin up the green environment with your new code.
Validate it through automated tests, canary checks, or manual QA.
When you’re confident it’s stable, switch all user traffic from blue to green.
From the customer’s perspective, the change is instantaneous, with no downtime. And if anything goes wrong, you can flip traffic back to blue just as quickly.
When Should You Use Blue/Green Deployment?
You should use blue/green deployment when downtime is unacceptable, rollback speed is critical, or your application runs at global scale.
It is especially valuable when:
You can’t afford downtime (e.g., e-commerce, SaaS platforms, banking).
You need instant rollback capabilities in case of bugs or performance regressions.
Your business runs at global scale, where even a few seconds of disruption means lost revenue or poor user experience.
Unlike rolling deployments, which gradually replace old instances with new ones, blue/green gives you a binary switch — either all traffic goes to the old version or the new one.
What Are the Trade-offs of Blue/Green Deployment?
The main trade-off is that blue/green prioritises uptime and safety, but at the cost of running duplicate infrastructure during the transition.
- Key considerations include:
Zero downtime during deployments - Instant rollback with a simple traffic switch
- Higher infrastructure cost, since you’re effectively running two environments at once
- Operational complexity when managing many services at scale
For organisations where uptime and safety outweigh cost, these trade-offs are well worth it. For others, hybrid strategies like rolling updates or canary deployments may strike a better balance.
How Does AWS ECS Simplify Blue/Green Deployment?
AWS ECS now handles the provisioning, validation, and traffic shifting for blue/green deployments natively. This means teams can adopt best practices without extra setup.
With ECS supporting blue/green directly, adopting this deployment method has never been easier. You can focus on your application logic while letting ECS manage much of the deployment complexity behind the scenes.
Which Deployment Strategy Is Right for You?
The “perfect” deployment strategy depends on your workloads, customer expectations, and cost considerations.
Blue/green is best when uptime and rollback are critical.
Rolling updates work well when infrastructure cost is a bigger concern.
Canary deployments provide a middle ground, limiting risk while avoiding full duplication.
If you’d like expert guidance on designing deployment strategies tailored to your business, contact us. We’ll help you find the right fit — whether that’s blue/green, rolling, canary, or a custom hybrid approach — so you can ship faster, safer, and smarter.
Key FAQs
There is typically a temporary increase in immediate infrastructure costs because both the blue and green environments run simultaneously. Many teams accept this trade-off for guaranteed uptime and instant rollback.
You can, but it’s no longer required. ECS now supports blue/green natively, which simplifies setup and reduces the need for multiple AWS services.
The biggest advantage is simplicity. ECS automates provisioning, validation, and traffic shifting, letting DevOps teams focus on applications instead of orchestration.
Not sure if blue/green is right for your workloads? Get in touch via our contact page to ask us about deployment strategies that balance speed, cost, and safety.
This article was written by Phuc Tran, one of our Consultants & Engineers. At Cloud Elemental, we help organisations simplify operations, strengthen resilience, and get more value out of their cloud investments.
