VIP Platform environments

At a minimum, VIP customers have a production environment and can add additional “child” environments such as preprod and develop for testing and development purposes. New child environments can be requested by submitting a VIP Support ticket.

A group of parent (production) and child (non-production) environments for an application can be created as either:

• A VIP Platform Node.js environment: A server environment running a Node.js application instance, including web containers and, optionally, Redis containers, all connected to VIP services and tooling.
• A VIP Platform WordPress environment: A server environment running a WordPress application instance, including web, database, cache, and WP-CLI containers, all connected to VIP services and tooling.

To ensure that application code will run uniformly across each of its associated environments, software versions and configurations should be kept as consistent as possible. Versions of software that are deployed to a WordPress or a Node.js VIP Platform environment can be managed in the Software Versions panel of the VIP Dashboard.

Environment types and recommended usage

• Production: A production environment is provided by default for all applications. This environment is intended for receiving public traffic. Only thoroughly tested code ready to go live should be deployed to production environments.
• Preprod: A preprod environment is intended for testing code and updates that have already passed testing on the develop environment. The database, codebase, and third-party integrations for this non-production environment should be configured to be as consistent as possible with the production environment. The more closely the preprod environment mirrors production, the more accurate results will be when testing code and updates.
• Develop: A develop environment is recommended for testing theme updates, feature updates, and new plugins after they have been tested on a local development environment.

Local development environments

The VIP Local Development Environment is recommended for developing code for an application on the VIP Platform. It is built to be as identical to a VIP Platform environment as possible, and designed for developing, testing bug fixes, and adding new features.