Environments

An Environment is a logical grouping of targets that represents a stage in your deployment pipeline. Environments define where solutions are deployed and enable controlled promotion through your release process.

What is an Environment?

Environments organize your infrastructure into deployment stages:

Common environment examples:

Environment	Purpose
Development	Early testing, developer verification
Test	QA testing, integration testing
Staging	Pre-production validation
Production	Live customer-facing systems

Environment Properties

Property	Description
Name	Environment identifier (e.g., “Production”)
Description	Optional description
Sort Order	Position in the environment list
Targets	Assigned target machines

Sort Order

The sort order determines the listed environment order:

Environment	Sort Order	Position
Development	0	First (deploy here first)
Test	10	Second
Staging	20	Third
Production	30	Last (final destination)

Note

Lower sort order values come first in the listed order. Promotion paths are defined by explicit promotion rules, not by sort order. Use increments of 10 to allow inserting new environments later.

Environment Scope

Environments in Mantis can be global (shared) or tenant-specific:

• Global environments (tenant_id is unset) are visible to all tenants and provide a shared pipeline structure across your organization
• Tenant-owned environments are visible only to the owning tenant and allow independent pipeline structures per tenant
• A target assignment carries the tenant of whoever created it, regardless of whether the environment itself is global or tenant-owned. An assignment made by a global administrator (who has no tenant) is stored system-level, with no tenant, and is not confined to one tenant’s view
• Each tenant can have different targets assigned within any environment they can see

This model lets you standardize pipeline stages globally while still allowing tenants to manage their own target assignments and deployment state independently.

Target Assignment

Targets are assigned to environments with a priority value:

Priority Ordering

Priority values range from -100 to 100 and default to 50. A promotion or rollback into the environment runs targets with higher priority values first:

Target	Priority	Order
web-1	80	First
web-2	70	Second
web-3	60	Third
db-1	10	Last

An ordinary deployment runs the targets its request names, in the order named, and does not use priority. See Target Selection.

Assigning Targets

1. Open the Tenancy group in the top navigation, then the Environments pill
2. Select an environment
3. Click Manage Targets on the detail page
4. In the Add Target form, choose one target from the Select Target dropdown
5. Set its Priority (-100 to 100, higher is deployed first)
6. Click Add Target, and repeat for each further target — the form assigns one at a time

Removing Targets

1. Open the environment detail page and click Manage Targets
2. Find the target under Associated Targets
3. Click the remove button on its row
4. Confirm removal

Environment State

Each solution tracks its state per environment:

Solution	Development	Staging	Production
Web App	v1.3.0	v1.2.0	v1.1.0
API	v2.1.0	v2.1.0	v2.0.0
Worker	v1.0.0	v1.0.0	v1.0.0

State information includes:

• Current Version - Deployed solution version
• Deployed At - Timestamp of deployment
• Deployed By - User who triggered deployment
• Target Count - Number of targets in environment

Promotion Flow

Environments define the promotion path:

Promotion Rules (Optional)

Administrators can configure promotion rules:

Rule	Description
Require Success	Previous deployment must succeed
Minimum Soak Time	Wait period before promotion
Require Approval	Manual sign-off required
Allow Skip	Selects the blocking message when no direct rule matches; it does not permit a skip

Creating Environments

In the UI

1. Open the Tenancy group in the top navigation, then the Environments pill
2. Click New Environment
3. Enter name (e.g., “Staging”)
4. Add optional description
5. Set sort order (e.g., 20)
6. Save

Environment Ordering

After creation, environments appear in sort order:

Development (0)
Test (10)
Staging (20)
Production (30)

To reorder, edit the sort order values.

Managing Environments

Editing Environments

1. Click on an environment
2. Update name, description, or sort order
3. Save changes

Deleting Environments

1. Click on an environment
2. Click Delete
3. Confirm deletion

Caution

Deleting an environment removes all target assignments and the current deployment state for that environment. Historical deployment records are preserved for audit purposes — the environment reference within them is cleared, but the environment name and slug are retained in the record so the history remains human-readable. This action cannot be undone.

Environment Variables

Solutions can have environment-specific variable values:

Variable	Development	Staging	Production
db_host	dev-db	staging-db	prod-db-cluster
log_level	debug	info	warn
replicas	1	2	5

There is no Variables tab on the solution detail page — the solution page links variable sets, it does not author variables. Environment-specific values are set on the variable itself, one variable per environment value:

1. Go to Variable Sets and open (or create) a set
2. Add a variable to the set
3. Pick the environment in the Environment Scope select — that stores the variable’s scope_environment_id
4. Enter the value for that environment and save
5. Repeat for each environment, then open the solution’s detail page and use Link set in its Variable sets section so deployments of that solution resolve from it

Where two linked sets define the same variable name, the higher-priority link wins.

Best Practices

Environment Design

Keep environments meaningful and distinct:

Good	Bad
Development, Staging, Production	env1, env2, env3
Integration, Performance, Production	test, test2, final

Target Distribution

Ensure appropriate target counts:

Environment	Purpose	Typical Targets
Development	Quick iteration	1-2
Test	Integration testing	2-4
Staging	Production mirror	Same as prod
Production	Live systems	As needed

Sort Order Strategy

Use gaps in sort order for flexibility:

Development: 0
Test: 100
Staging: 200
Production: 300

This allows inserting Performance (150) or Pre-Prod (250) later.

Naming Conventions

Use clear, consistent names:

• Capitalized: Production, Staging, Development
• Or lowercase: production, staging, development
• Avoid abbreviations: prod, stg, dev (unless universal)

Example Environment Setup

Standard Pipeline

Environment	Sort Order	Description
Development	0	Developer testing
Integration	10	Integration tests
QA	20	QA team testing
Staging	30	Pre-production
Production	40	Live systems

Multi-Region

Environment	Sort Order	Description
Development	0	Single region dev
Staging-US	10	US staging
Staging-EU	11	EU staging
Production-US	20	US production
Production-EU	21	EU production

Next Steps

• Creating Environments - Setup guide
• Target Assignment - Managing targets
• Promotions - Promotion workflows
• Environment State - Tracking deployments