Create and Manage Deployment Environments

An environment is a user-defined collection of resources that host applications. It’s the application's mechanism for bringing together components with the agent that actually deploys them.

Environments are typically modeled on some stage of the software project lifecycle, such as development, QA, or production. A resource is a deployment target, such as a database or J2EE container. Resources reside on a host that is a physical, virtual, or cloud-based “machine.”

Environments can have different topologies. For example, an environment can consist of a single machine, be spread over several machines, or be distributed over clusters of machines. Approvals are generally scoped to environments.

Environments are created at the global level and used by multiple applications. This helps IT organizations to use shared or application-specific environments. Deployment Automation maintains an inventory of every artifact deployed to each environment and tracks the differences between them.

Environments can be imported and exported. Importing and exporting are especially useful if you have multiple Deployment Automation servers and need to quickly move or update environments. After an environment is created, it is added to an application. Environments may be used by multiple applications.

You can enforce an approval process or implement application gates before the deployment is deployed to the environment. Black-out dates can be set within an individual environment to make sure that it aligns to deployment schedules and policies.

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