Managing environments

Environments are deployment platforms on which applications are deployed and configured. A software environment is a collection of hosted servers and application software that provides a platform for running and testing applications. Typically, an environment consists of:

• One or multiple physical or virtual servers
• Hosted applications, including deployment installations, and releases on web servers; application servers; database servers; and legacy applications
• Deployment environment configurations
• Network infrastructures, such as firewalls, SAN storage, and network switches

You can have several environments in a software release process, such as development, quality assurance, user acceptance testing, and production. An application passes through these environments. You can associate multiple environments with your application, but you must associate at least one environment with it.

Environments are available during various phases of the deployment life cycle, including the build, install, configure, and verify phases. The release team provides the services for deployment and makes the environments available during the various stages of release and testing.

If you do not need an environment during the release, or if you want to deactivate an environment during a particular phase of the release process, you can make it inactive.

Use the following procedures to manage your environments:

• • To add environments
  • To edit an environment name
  • To deactivate or activate an environment
  • Where to go from here

To add environments

1. From Dashboard > My Applications or from the Applications tab, click the relevant application name.
2. Click the add/remove environments link.
3. Click create new environment as many times as the number of environments that you require.
4. Enter a name for each environment in the displayed fields.
5. Click Save.
    The Environments page is populated with the environment names that you added.

To edit an environment name

1. From Environment > Environments, click the environment name that you want to change.
2. In the Name field, change the name of the environment.
3. Click Update.

To deactivate or activate an environment

1. From Environment > Environments, click one of the following links:
   • To deactivate an active environment, click Make Inactive next to the environment.
   • To activate an inactive environment, click Make Active next to the environment.

Environments are listed separately in Active and Inactive sections.

Where to go from here

After you have created components, you must associate environments with components.