¶ Understanding Staging and Production Environments
Every CDN Distribution in Kintify comes with two environments: Staging and Production. This dual-environment setup provides you with a safe way to test and deploy changes to your content delivery configuration.
The Staging environment is your testing ground. It's designed to let you validate configuration changes before they affect your live traffic.
- Uses a separate hostname:
staging-[distribution-id].kintify.net
- Changes only affect the staging environment
- Identical capabilities to production
- No impact on live traffic
- Perfect for testing and validation
- Testing new origin configurations
- Validating SSL certificate changes
- Trying out security rules
- Experimenting with caching settings
- Verifying hostname configurations
- Testing URL redirects and rewrites
- Always test significant changes in staging first
- Verify your configuration works as expected using the staging URL
- Use staging to troubleshoot issues before applying fixes to production
- Document your testing results before moving to production
The Production environment is where your live traffic flows. All your actual users interact with this environment.
- Uses your main hostname:
[distribution-id].kintify.net
- Changes affect live traffic immediately
- Designed for stable, verified configurations
- Optimized for performance and reliability
- After validating changes in Staging
- When deploying well-tested configurations
- For emergency fixes that can't wait for Staging
- When making minor, low-risk adjustments
- Always validate major changes in Staging before production
- Schedule significant production changes during low-traffic periods
- Keep documentation of production configurations
- Monitor performance after making changes
When you update your Distribution configuration, you have two options:
-
Staging Only:
- Changes apply only to the staging environment
- Perfect for testing
- No impact on production
- Allows thorough validation
-
Production Update:
- Updates staging and production simultaneously
- Ensures environments stay in sync
- Use when changes are well-tested
- Changes to Staging never automatically propagate to production
- Production updates always update Staging to maintain consistency
- Each environment maintains its own revision history
- You can track changes separately in each environment
-
Plan Your Changes
- Document what you're changing
- Understand the potential impact
- Prepare rollback plans
-
Test in Staging
- Apply changes to staging environment
- Test thoroughly using staging URL
- Verify all functionality works as expected
-
Validate Results
- Check logs and performance metrics
- Confirm desired behavior
- Document any issues or concerns
-
Deploy to Production
- Schedule the production update
- Apply changes during appropriate time window
- Monitor results closely
-
Monitor and Verify
- Watch performance metrics
- Check error rates
- Confirm everything works as expected
- Regularly review differences between environments
- Document when and why environments differ
- Plan to resolve any long-term discrepancies
- Keep records of all major changes
- Document testing procedures
- Note any issues encountered
- Watch performance metrics in both environments
- Compare behavior between environments
- Look for unexpected differences
¶ 4. Maintain Security
- Apply security settings consistently
- Test security changes thoroughly in staging
- Monitor security events in both environments
Remember: The dual-environment setup is a powerful tool for managing your CDN configuration safely and effectively. Use both environments as intended to ensure the best possible experience for your users while maintaining the ability to test and validate changes safely.