The grace period determines how long existing instances remain active during a deployment before Elastigroup detaches them. This helps you control how quickly new instances replace old ones during rolling updates.

What the grace period does

When you set a grace period, Elastigroup waits for the full duration before detaching old instances. For example, if you configure a grace period of 1,000 seconds, the group replaces instances only after all 1,000 seconds have passed.

This delay allows you to complete initialization tasks, warm‑up processes, or health checks before the system removes existing instances.

How it affects deployments

During a deployment, Elastigroup creates new “green” instances and keeps the “blue” instances running until the grace period ends. Only after the timer completes does Elastigroup detach the older instances.

This ensures:

• A stable rollout

• No interruption of service

• Time for your application to become healthy on new instances

Adjusting the grace period

If you need faster deployments, you can reduce the grace period. When the grace period is shorter, Elastigroup detaches old instances sooner, speeding up the rollout.

If you need slower or safer rollouts, increase the grace period to give new instances more time to stabilize.

Screenshot example

Below is an example of blue (old) instances and green (new) instances during a deployment. Old instances remain attached until the grace period ends.