Environment

An Environment in Odin is an isolated namespace for deploying services. It represents a stage in your development lifecycle and provides logical separation between different deployment contexts.

What is an Environment?

Environments allow you to:

Deploy the same service to different stages (dev, staging, production)
Isolate deployments from each other
Associate services with specific cloud provider accounts
Manage service lifecycle independently per environment

Environment Properties

Each environment has the following properties:

Name: Unique identifier (e.g., dev, staging, production)
Organization ID: The organization that owns the environment
Provider Accounts: One or more cloud provider accounts associated with the environment
Provisioning Type: Default provisioning strategy (e.g., kubernetes, ec2)
Status: Current state (CREATING, READY, DELETING, DELETED)
Auto-deletion Time: Optional scheduled cleanup for ephemeral environments

Environment Lifecycle

Creating an Environment

Create a new environment using the CLI:

odin create env <env-name> --accounts <account1>,<account2>

Example:

odin create env staging --accounts aws/dev,aws/shared

This creates an environment named “staging” associated with two AWS accounts.

Listing Environments

List all environments you have access to:

odin list env

Filter by provider account:

odin list env --account aws/production

Include environments from other users (requires access):

odin list env --all

Describing an Environment

Get detailed information about an environment:

odin describe env <env-name>

Filter by service or component:

odin describe env staging --service my-service
odin describe env staging --service my-service --component database

Checking Environment Status

Check the deployment status of an environment:

odin status env <env-name>

Get status for a specific service:

odin status env staging --service my-service

Deleting an Environment

Delete an environment and all its services:

odin delete env <env-name>

Environment States

Environments transition through several states:

State	Description
`CREATING`	Environment is being provisioned
`READY`	Environment is available for deployments
`DELETING`	Environment is being torn down
`DELETED`	Environment has been removed

Environment Best Practices

Naming Conventions

Use clear, consistent names for environments:

dev or development: Developer environments
qa or staging: Testing and QA environments
prod or production: Production environments
feature-<name>: Feature-specific ephemeral environments

Multi-Account Strategy

Separate environments by purpose:

# Development environment
odin create env dev --accounts aws/dev-account

# Staging environment (dev + shared services)
odin create env staging --accounts aws/dev-account,aws/shared-services

# Production environment
odin create env prod --accounts aws/prod-account,aws/shared-services

Ephemeral Environments

Create temporary environments for feature branches:

odin create env feature-auth-v2 --accounts aws/dev-account
# ... deploy and test ...
odin delete env feature-auth-v2

Default Environment

Set a default environment for your profile to avoid typing --env every time:

odin set env staging

Now all commands will use “staging” unless you specify a different --env.

Environment Isolation

Environments provide isolation at multiple levels:

Resource Isolation: Services in different environments use separate cloud resources
Namespace Isolation: Kubernetes deployments use environment-specific namespaces
Configuration Isolation: Each environment can have different provisioning configs
Access Control: Environments can have different access policies

Examples

Create a Development Environment

odin create env dev --accounts aws/dev

Create a Production Environment with Multiple Accounts

odin create env production \
  --accounts aws/prod-compute,aws/prod-data,aws/shared-services

Check All Services in an Environment

odin status env staging

Output:

Environment: staging
Status: READY

Services:
┌──────────────┬─────────┬────────────┬────────────┐
│ Service      │ Version │ Status     │ Components │
├──────────────┼─────────┼────────────┼────────────┤
│ user-api     │ 1.2.0   │ DEPLOYED   │ 3          │
│ payment-svc  │ 2.0.1   │ DEPLOYED   │ 2          │
│ analytics    │ 1.0.0   │ DEPLOYING  │ 4          │
└──────────────┴─────────┴────────────┴────────────┘

Delete an Ephemeral Environment

odin delete env feature-new-dashboard

Service: Deploy services to environments
Provisioning: Configure how components are deployed in environments
Versioning: Manage service versions across environments