Deployment environment

What it is

A deployment environment represents a target such as development, test, staging, or production in a delivery system. It is a governance boundary around deployment, not merely a variable named environment: production.

Why it exists

Production changes need different permissions, approvals, checks, history, and secrets from a test deployment. Environments make those controls explicit and reusable.

Key ideas

• Connect deployment jobs to an environment so deployment history and approvals/checks apply to that target.
• Put approvals and automated checks at the environment boundary rather than trusting a script to remember them.
• Keep credentials scoped to the environment. A pipeline that can deploy to development should not automatically deploy to production.
• Environments support traceability: what version went where, who approved it, and what checks passed.

Exam decision

Use an environment when the requirement combines deployment target, authorization, approvals, checks, and history. A variable group stores values; it does not by itself protect a production deployment.

Related

deployment-gate · environment-approvals · pipeline-yaml · subscription-connection

Source: Approvals and checks