Environment Promotion

The Scenario

You have a staging environment and a production environment. You want:

Every version to deploy to staging first
Production to only receive versions that passed staging
Optional approval before production deploys
No manual “okay, staging looks good, now deploy to prod” steps

Without Ctrlplane

The typical flow:

CI deploys to staging
Someone checks if staging is healthy (maybe)
Someone remembers to trigger the prod deploy
Hopefully they deploy the right version
Hopefully staging actually passed

What goes wrong:

“Staging passed” is based on vibes, not metrics
The manual promotion step gets forgotten
Wrong version deployed to prod
No audit trail of what was verified

With Ctrlplane

Define your environments:

type: Environment
name: Staging
resourceSelector: resource.metadata["env"] == "staging"
---
type: Environment
name: Production
resourceSelector: resource.metadata["env"] == "production"

Add an environment progression policy:

type: Policy
name: Staging Before Production
selectors:
  - environment: environment.name == "Production"
rules:
  - environmentProgression:
      waitFor: Staging

Add verification to staging:

type: Policy
name: Staging Verification
selectors:
  - environment: environment.name == "Staging"
rules:
  - verification:
      metrics:
        - name: health-check
          provider:
            type: http
            url: "https://{{.resource.config.host}}/health"
          successCondition: result.statusCode == 200
          intervalSeconds: 30
          count: 10  # 5 minutes of health checks

Add approval for production:

type: Policy
name: Production Approval
selectors:
  - environment: environment.name == "Production"
rules:
  - anyApproval:
      minApprovals: 1

What Happens

CI creates v1.2.3 — Version is marked ready
Staging release created — Deploys immediately (no gates)
Staging verification runs — 5 minutes of health checks
Staging passes → Production is unblocked
Approval requested — Notification sent to approvers
Approval granted — Team lead approves
Production deploys — Version goes live
Production verification — Confirms health in prod

If staging verification fails, production never receives the version. No manual intervention needed to block it.

Key Benefits

Benefit	How It Works
Enforced ordering	Production physically cannot deploy before staging
Verified promotion	Only versions that pass verification can promote
Audit trail	Full history of what was verified and when
Optional approval	Add human gates where needed
Automatic flow	No manual “deploy to prod” step

Variations

Multiple Pre-Production Environments

# QA → Staging → Production
- name: Staging After QA
  selectors:
    - environment: environment.name == "Staging"
  rules:
    - environmentProgression:
        waitFor: QA

- name: Production After Staging  
  selectors:
    - environment: environment.name == "Production"
  rules:
    - environmentProgression:
        waitFor: Staging

Different Verification per Environment

# Light verification in QA
- name: QA Verification
  selectors:
    - environment: environment.name == "QA"
  rules:
    - verification:
        metrics:
          - name: smoke-test
            count: 3  # Quick check

# Thorough verification in Staging
- name: Staging Verification
  selectors:
    - environment: environment.name == "Staging"
  rules:
    - verification:
        metrics:
          - name: integration-tests
            count: 10  # Longer check
          - name: performance-baseline
            count: 5

Skip Staging for Hotfixes

Use version metadata to bypass staging for critical fixes:

- name: Hotfix Direct to Prod
  selectors:
    - environment: environment.name == "Production"
    - version: version.metadata["hotfix"] == "true"
  rules:
    - anyApproval:
        minApprovals: 2  # Require more approvals for hotfixes
    # No environment progression rule = skip staging

Next Steps

Environment Progression

Configure progression rules

Verification

Set up health checks

Approvals

Configure approval workflows

Multi-Region

Add gradual rollouts within production

​The Scenario

​Without Ctrlplane

​With Ctrlplane

​What Happens

​Key Benefits

​Variations

​Multiple Pre-Production Environments

​Different Verification per Environment

​Skip Staging for Hotfixes

​Next Steps