---
title: "How are atomic code updates different from traditional code deployments?"
date: "2025-02-04T13:58:53+00:00"
summary: "Discover how atomic code updates in Cloud Next differ from traditional deployments, ensuring consistency and reliability across your infrastructure."
image:
type: "article"
url: "/acquia-cloud-platform/help/60921-how-are-atomic-code-updates-different-traditional-code-deployments"
id: "4ec2c954-82ef-404d-a8f1-6925ab5984dd"
---

### Traditional code deployment in Cloud Classic

On the [Cloud Classic](/acquia-cloud-platform/overview "Overview") infrastructure, code deployments involve a multi-step process.

An overview of the [Cloud Classic](/acquia-cloud-platform/overview "Overview") code deployment process is:

1.  After you trigger code deployment, the Cloud Classic web infrastructure performs a `[git pull]` operation to pull the new code to a hidden repository folder.
2.  After that process is complete, the Cloud Classic web infrastructure syncs the changes to the active directory for your docroot.

This process, while typically fast, can result in inconsistent code deployments across multiple web nodes.

![Acquia Cloud Classic Deployment Process Diagram](https://acquia.widen.net/content/d37081f6-b641-4d82-a6e7-c1ac7adffe26/web/Acquia%20Cloud%20Classic%20Deployment%20Process%20Diagram.png?w=720&itok=61xVajZH)

### Atomic code deployment in Cloud Next

In contrast to [Cloud Classic](/acquia-cloud-platform/overview "Overview") code deployment, the modern deployment methodologies advocate for atomic updates, a concept Acquia has implemented in [Cloud Next](/node/55808). Atomic updates, also known as atomic deployments, refer to a deployment process where updates are made all at once rather than in parts. Therefore, an atomic code deployment ensures that at any given time, you interact with a complete version of the application. In other words, you do not interact with a mix of old and new code during the deployment process, thereby avoiding errors or inconsistencies. In addition, when the atomic code deployment process fails, the system ensures that no web request uses that code.

Acquia has implemented atomic deployments in Cloud Next with the following sequence:

1.  After you trigger code deployment, the Cloud Next application layer automatically provisions new passive infrastructure, such as pods and containers, and deploys your code and environment settings.
2.  Once the pod is healthy, traffic is diverted from your old Drupal pods to your new Drupal pods and `post-code-deploy` Cloud Hooks are triggered.
3.  After traffic stops routing to your old pods, they will shut down.

![Acquia Cloud Next Deployment Process Diagram - Atomic Updates](https://acquia.widen.net/content/d2f189d6-f4eb-4111-b037-69c0c128692e/web/Acquia%20Cloud%20Next%20Deployment%20Process%20Diagram%20-%20Atomic%20Updates.png?w=720&itok=X_NcbCWf)

This process not only allows for clean and consistent updates to your environment but also ensures that your environments constantly run on fresh and healthy pods. Code deployments in Cloud Next environments take approximately 2 to 4 minutes longer as compared to the deployments in Cloud Classic environments. This extra time is required to deploy the new infrastructure and ensure a clean build.

Note

*   For information about optimizing your code deployments, see the [best practices to follow in Cloud Next environments](https://docs.acquia.com/acquia-cloud-platform/manage-apps/code#code-deployment-cloud-next).
*   For information about code deployments in Cloud Next, see [code deployment in Cloud Next](/node/56284#code-deployment).