Canary Analysis
Does the new version behave differently from the old version? A sensor of behavioral drift between deployments, measured on real traffic.
Canary analysis routes a small percentage of production traffic to the new version and compares its behavior to the old. If error rates, latency, or invariant violations diverge, the canary fails.
Sensor properties
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Oracle strength | High — divergence on real traffic is strong evidence |
| Independence | High — production behavior cannot be gamed |
| Scope | System-level |
| Feedback latency | Minutes |
| Actionability | Guiding — shows which metrics diverged |
| Type | Retrospective |
What it cannot detect
Canary analysis can only detect differences in metrics you’re measuring. Unknown unknowns require high-cardinality events to investigate after the fact.