GOV.UK's environments (integration, staging, production)
GOV.UK has several environments with different purposes.
For a quick view of what’s where, you can use the release app.
Continuous integration (CI)
Runs tests for applications.
Integration
Used by GOV.UK product teams to test changes to software.
Right now this environment is also used by content editors at GDS and in other departments to preview their content changes. This functionality should be replaced by draft preview functionality as part of the publishing platform.
Integration is hosted on AWS.
Staging
Used by GOV.UK product teams while deploying changes to ensure that they behave correctly in a production-like environment. This means that staging must be similar to production so that we’re able to test things like the performance impact of changes.
Staging is hosted on AWS.
Access to Staging is restricted to office IPs, so you’ll need to be on the VPN. AWS configuration can be found in govuk-aws-data.
Production
The thing that runs the website for real people.
Production is hosted on AWS.