Question

A retail company builds container images in a CI pipeline. Currently, each environment (dev, staging, production) rebuilds the image from source using its own environment-specific Dockerfile. The team frequently discovers that code passing all staging tests fails in production due to subtle differences in the built artifacts. As the architect, what change should you recommend to the SDLC process to eliminate these environment-specific defects?

Accepted Answer

Build the image once in CI, store it in Artifact Registry with an immutable digest, and promote that same artifact through dev, staging, and production.

Answer

Add more integration tests in each environment so defects are caught before the image reaches production.

Answer

Standardize on a single base OS image across all environment-specific Dockerfiles while continuing to rebuild in each environment.

Answer

Run production builds on larger machine types to ensure the compiler behaves consistently with staging.