Environments

Environments let you deploy your application to different stages (production, staging, development) with environment-specific configuration.

Default Environments

If you don't specify environments in your strictops.yml, StrictOps uses these defaults:

• Environments: dev, prod
• Production: prod (or production, if present in your environments list)

Defining Environments

Environments are defined in the deploy section of your strictops.yml:

version: 1
deploy:
  environments:               # default: [dev, prod] if omitted
    - staging
    - production
  production:                  # default: [prod, production] filtered to environments list
    - production
services:
  api:
    type: api

The environments array lists all environment names. The production array marks which environments are considered production (affects alerting, safeguards, and stack strategy isolation).

Environment-Specific Configuration

Services can have different configuration per environment:

services:
  api:
    type: api
    env:
      LOG_LEVEL: info
    environments:
      staging:
        env:
          LOG_LEVEL: debug
        secrets:
          - STAGING_API_KEY
      production:
        env:
          LOG_LEVEL: warn
        secrets:
          - PRODUCTION_API_KEY

Environment overrides merge with the base service configuration.

How Environments Work

When you deploy to an environment:

1. StrictOps reads your strictops.yml configuration
2. Base service settings are loaded
3. Environment-specific overrides are applied
4. A CloudFormation stack is created/updated for that environment

Each environment gets its own:

• CloudFormation stack
• ECS service instances
• Load balancer target group
• CloudWatch log group

Environment Isolation

Environments are isolated at the infrastructure level:

The degree of isolation depends on the stack strategy configured for the project (shared, split, or isolated).

Typical Setup

A common pattern is three environments:

deploy:
  environments:
    - dev
    - staging
    - prod
  production:
    - prod

Deployment Targeting

When creating a deployment, specify the target environment:

{
  "serviceId": "api",
  "environment": "staging",
  ...
}

The deployment will use the configuration for that environment.

Relationship to Other Entities

• Projects define which environments are available
• Deployments target a specific environment
• Services can have per-environment configuration overrides
• Logs are separated by environment
• Stack Strategies control how environments are grouped into CloudFormation stacks