Zero-Downtime Deployments with Docker Compose — No Kubernetes Required
Summary
The article argues that Kubernetes is unnecessary for production services and provides a practical zero-downtime deployment pattern using Docker Compose and HAProxy. It covers three core requirements—multiple backend replicas, a load balancer that redispatches to healthy backends, and a scripted rolling update—along with DNS-based backend discovery and layered health checks. It includes concrete config snippets and a step-by-step, rollback-free deployment flow, with Traefik shown as a warning example.