Deploy your Graph to Production
Deploy Apollo Router and subgraphs to production
This guide walks you through deploying your GraphQL infrastructure (Apollo Router and subgraphs) into a production environment. You'll validate your configuration, apply performance and security best practices, and connect observability for reliable operations at scale.
Prerequisites
Apollo Router deployed and running in a testing environment
Subgraphs deployed and running in a testing environment
Access to deploy to production infrastructure (cloud or on-prem)
Access to Apollo Studio for your organization's graph
Production credentials, secrets, and network access
By the end of the milestone, you'll have:
Apollo Router and subgraphs configured and deployed for production
Verified access for clients to your production graph endpoint
Applied best practices for production environment deployments
Steps to complete
1. Create a production variant in Apollo Studio
Create a production variant in Apollo Studio to manage your production schema and configuration.
2. Deploy subgraphs to production
Deploy subgraph services to your production environment
Configure subgraph endpoints with production URLs and ensure they're accessible by the router
Set up subgraph monitoring to track performance, errors, and resource usage
Validate subgraph health and ensure they can handle production traffic loads
3. Publish subgraph schemas to the production variant
Publish your subgraph schema and routing URL for each subgraph to the production variant in Apollo Studio.
4. Deploy router to production
Review the Router YAML Configuration
Set up your metrics collection for live operational insight
Set environment variables for production, such as the
APOLLO_GRAPH_REFandAPOLLO_KEYApply production-specific settings (timeouts, limits, logging levels)
Deploy the router to your production environment