ITIL4-CDS Create, Deliver and Support Practice Question
A development team is implementing a new deployment strategy to ensure minimal downtime for a critical customer-facing application. They decide to route a small subset of traffic to the new version while monitoring performance metrics before a full rollout. Which deployment strategy is the team utilizing?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates frequently confuse canary releases with blue/green deployments or pilot groups, overlooking the specific mechanism of routing a small subset of live traffic to the new version.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Canary release
The team is using a canary release strategy. By routing a small subset of traffic to the new version, they can validate performance and functionality in a real-world environment with limited impact. This approach is essential in ITIL 4 CDS for minimizing risk and ensuring that service performance meets agreed-upon levels before completing a full transition to the production environment for all users.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Blue-green deployment
Why it's wrong here
Blue-green deployment involves maintaining two identical production environments. One environment, the green one, serves live traffic, while the blue one is updated. Once the update is verified, traffic is switched completely from green to blue, rather than incrementally routing a subset of traffic to the new version.
- ✓
Canary release
Why this is correct
Canary release involves rolling out the new service version to a small, controlled group of users first. By monitoring the performance and error rates of this subset, the organization mitigates risk before a widespread rollout, which aligns perfectly with the strategy of incremental service delivery and continuous improvement.
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Feature flag deployment
Why it's wrong here
Feature flagging allows developers to enable or disable specific features within an application without deploying new code. While this technique supports continuous delivery, it is primarily focused on controlling feature availability at the application level rather than managing traffic routing between different infrastructure versions of the service.
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Rolling deployment
Why it's wrong here
Rolling deployment involves progressively replacing instances of an old version with a new one across the infrastructure. While this update happens gradually, it is typically an automated replacement process rather than a traffic-routing strategy specifically designed to test the new version against a live subset of users.
About these practice questions
This ITIL4-CDS question is part of Courseiva's 155-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official PeopleCert/AXELOS exam blueprint
This ITIL4-CDS practice question is part of Courseiva's free PeopleCert/AXELOS certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the ITIL4-CDS exam.