A release orchestration mechanism for cloud services. According to some implementations, while an app aware proxy routes production traffic to a first application (app) version that runs in a plurality of container orchestration system (COS) pods having first app version containers, configuration information is received. When a threshold number of the COS pods having the second app version containers are live, a validation of the second app version is caused. Then a transition to sending production traffic to the second app version containers is performed. After causing the transition, timers are started based on a time period indicated in the configuration information and the first app version containers are instructed to gracefully shut down. Based on expiration of the timers, any of the COS pods having the first app version containers that are not yet shut down are forced to shut down.