What is environment in Azure DevOps

• An environment is a collection of resources that you can target with deployments from a pipeline
• Environments represent a group of resources for a Pipeline. The resources themselves are the actual deployment targets to which artifacts will be deployed
• Evironment resource example: AKS Resource (AKS itself is the deployment target)
• Environment belongs to the release process

Create AKS environment

• Environemnts > Create new environment
• Fillup Name and Description > Next
• Provider: Azure Kubernetes Service
• Select target subscription
• Select cluster
• Namespace
  • New
  • Name: ‘devops-demo’
• Validate and create

Use Environment as Target in Deployment Jobs

Kubernetes

jobs:
# ... ... ...

- deployment: deployToAKS
  displayName: Deploy to AKS
  dependsOn: buildAndPushDockerImageJob
  environment: 'AKSDemoEnvironment.devops-demo'
  strategy:
    runOnce:
      deploy:
          steps:
          - script: echo "Hello world"

VM / On-premise server

jobs:
# ... ... ...

- deployment: VMDeploy
  displayName: Deploy to VM
  environment: 
    name: ContosoDeploy
    resourceType: VirtualMachine
    tags: windows # only deploy to virtual machines with this tag
  strategy:
    runOnce:
      deploy:   
          steps:
          - script: echo "Hello world"

Observability

• Environemnts > select target environment
  • Resources: mapped K8s namespace
  • Deployments: CD deployments
• Resources
  • Select target namespace
    • Workloads: same as AKS workloads for the namespace
    • Services: same as AKS services for the namespace
  • Workloads
    • Select target replicaSet, will show details
    • Select any pod, will show followings
      • Overview
      • Logs
      • YAML
  • Services
    • Select target service, will show details
    • Select any pod, will show followings
      • Overview
      • Logs
      • YAML
• Deployments
  • Select a run
  • Will show
    • Jobs
    • Changes
    • Workitems

Approval

• Environemnts > select target environment
• Vertical dots on top right > Approvals and checks
• Click “+” icon > Approvals
• Select user or group > Create

Security

• Environemnts > Select target environment
• Vertical dots on top right > Security

Links

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/process/environments
• Good article about environment: https://dev.to/n3wt0n/azure-devops-environments-intro-3p64