Patent attributes
Systems, methods, and computer-readable media are disclosed for performing a hitless upgrade of executable code in the absence of an orchestrator or other upgrade manager. A mechanism is disclosed that utilizes containers to update software functionality, features, or the like without interrupting a service provided by a container and without relying on an orchestrator or other upgrade manager to coordinate the upgrade process. State information indicative of a current state of module(s) within a container is maintained in an external data store such as a state database. A hand-off from a current container to a new container that updates module code/functionality of the current container can be initiated upon determining that a state metric calculated by the old container at a future timestamp matches a state metric independently calculated by the new container at the same timestamp.