Posted On: Mar 15, 2022
AWS is announcing general availability for AWS AppConfig Feature Flags. Feature flagging allows you to quickly roll out new features safely and with more confidence. AWS AppConfig is a feature of AWS Systems Manager.
AWS AppConfig Feature Flags allow customers to develop a new feature and deploy it to production, but hide the feature from users behind a flag. The flag is stored in configuration data. Once the feature is ready to be released, engineers can update the flag configuration data without deploying any code. This is a safer feature-management process because new code isn't deployed to release the feature. Features can be made available to users instantly or gradually. Deploying gradually is recommended since it allows you to limit impact of any unexpected behavior. AWS AppConfig Feature Flags also have additional safety guard rails, including flag constraints and validators, which allow flag content to be checked for accuracy prior to being deployed. Other safety guard rails include an automatic rollback of a flag if a specified CloudWatch alarm is triggered.
Since the preview release in November 2021, two new features have also been added to AWS AppConfig Feature Flags: additional capabilities for feature flagging in Lambda, and tools for flag cleanup and deprecation. For customers using feature flags in Lambda, the new Lambda extension allows customers to call feature flags individually using a HTTP endpoint. For flag cleanup and deprecation, customers can identify which flags are intended to be short-term, and then can manage stale flags to be eventually deprecated.
AWS AppConfig Feature Flags are available in all public AWS Regions as well as AWS GovCloud (US).
To get started on AWS AppConfig Feature Flags, read our guide and our launch blog post.