Environments

Environments in Ctrlplane are logical groupings of targets that represent distinct stages in your software deployment pipeline. They are defined at the system level and play a crucial role in organizing and managing the deployment process across various infrastructure components.

Key Concepts

System-Level Definition

Environments are defined at the system level, ensuring consistency across all deployments within a system. This approach allows for standardized progression of releases through predefined stages.

Environment Policies

Environment policies determine how deployments move from one environment's targets to the next. These policies can include:

• Approval workflows
• Automated checks
• Rollback strategies
• Deployment windows

Target Filters

Each environment uses target filters to dynamically determine which targets are associated with it. This feature allows for flexible and automatic assignment of targets to environments based on their characteristics.

Dynamic Target Association

The use of target filters enables dynamic addition and removal of targets from environments. As a result:

1. Pipelines and deployments automatically run against newly added targets.
2. New software releases or upgrades are automatically applied to relevant targets.

This dynamic association ensures that your deployment process remains agile and responsive to changes in your infrastructure.

Scalability for Distributed Systems

In large-scale distributed systems, you may have multiple production environments, each corresponding to a different deployment region. This setup allows for:

• Staggered rollouts across regions
• Region-specific configurations
• Improved fault isolation

For example, you might have production environments like prod-us-west, prod-us-east, prod-eu-central, each with its own set of targets and potentially different rollout schedules.

Benefits of Using Environments

1. Structured Deployment Process: Clearly defined stages for software progression.
2. Consistency: Standardized environments across all deployments in a system.
3. Flexibility: Dynamic target association allows for easy scaling and infrastructure changes.
4. Control: Environment policies provide fine-grained control over the deployment process.
5. Visibility: Clear overview of where software versions are deployed across your infrastructure.

Example Environment Setup

A typical environment setup might include:

1. Development: For ongoing development work
2. QA: For quality assurance and testing
3. Staging: A pre-production environment mirroring production
4. Production: Multiple production environments for different regions

Each of these environments would have its own target filters and policies, ensuring that software progresses through the pipeline in a controlled and consistent manner.

Implementation in Ctrlplane

In Ctrlplane, environments are typically managed through the UI or API. The environment configuration includes:

1. Name and description
2. Target filters
3. Associated policies
4. Any environment-specific variables or configurations

For example, creating an environment might involve setting up target filters like:

environment: staging
region: us-west

This would automatically associate all targets with matching labels to the staging environment in the US West region.

By leveraging environments effectively in Ctrlplane, you can create a robust, scalable, and flexible deployment pipeline that adapts to your infrastructure needs while maintaining control and visibility over your software releases.