> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.release.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.release.com/reference-documentation/workflows-in-release/parallel-deployments.md).

# Parallel deployments

You may find that Release's default serial deployment is slow. A series of 30-second deployments can add up to several minutes when executed serially.

To improve on deployment time, you can break your Release workflow up into **steps** and allow steps to run **tasks** in parallel.

Let's take a look at how parallel deployment works.

## Steps

Steps run sequentially.

You can break your workflow up into serial-dependent steps to ensure that prerequisites are set up first, before dependent services or databases are deployed. This is the same way the default serial deployment works.

## Tasks

You can then group tasks together under the workflow steps, and each step can run in parallel as long as there are no interdependencies between tasks in a step.

## Errors

Errors are typically ignored during tasks because Kubernetes can automatically restart and keep trying until a service succeeds.

For example, if service B depends on service A, and you mistakenly run service B before service A, service B may fail to start. Kubernetes will retry service B and if service A is now functioning, then service B will start properly.

This may not be the behaviour you want, however. A job in a task might be critical to some dependency further on in the tasks or steps, and you may prefer the whole chain to fail as soon as a failure is detected. In such a case, you can use the `halt_on_error: true` key to stop the stage and abort the deployment. Any services or jobs successfully started in a previous step or task may still be running or have run, though, so we recommend you assess how you will clean up on the next run.

## Waiting

You may not want to wait for a task to succeed completely before moving on. This may be the case, for example, if a frontend takes a long time to deploy and has no particular dependencies in the steps. You can start the task in an earlier step and use the `wait_for_finish: false` key to let it run in parallel with the other steps.

## Visualizing parallel deployments

Here's an example workflow definition:

```yaml
workflows:
  - name: setup
    parallelize:
    - step: frontend
      tasks: [services.frontend]
      wait_for_finish: false
    - step: migrate
      tasks: [jobs.migrate, jobs.scrub]
      halt_on_error: true
    - step: backend
      tasks: [services.backend]
```

These steps would deploy like this:

![](https://585411240-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2F-M1neGLLQ0sDXeK6ooSo%2Fuploads%2Fgit-blob-c1ad0a04a882f54f98f7a9de32bf8968088d8416%2FParallel%20Workflow.jpg?alt=media)


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