Thoroughly testing code is no easy process. And, as you probably know, there is plenty that can go wrong before and after an update goes live. No one wants bad code to get deployed in a production environment or encounter issues that weren't anticipated, including infrastructure problems causing complications with the code’s behavior.
Fortunately, a proper staging environment can catch most problems related to your code before it goes live. So, let’s talk about it.
What is a staging environment?
A staging environment typically serves as the final step before an application gets deployed in a production environment. Here, software updates can be tested to vet its quality and pinpoint any possible issues before getting closer to release. A staging environment is constructed to be as close as possible to a production environment, which means it is a near replica of the same servers, databases, caches, and hardware.
The significance of staging environments
Many times, software testing and deployment are done in stages, usually in the order of development, integration, testing and QA, staging, and finally, production.
And since we live in a world heavily reliant on various applications and software, there is little room for error when a product or update goes live to your end users. This is why staging environments have long been depended on to test the application in an environment as close to a production environment as possible.
The staging environment lets you conduct several different tests that can identify performance problems and bugs before it goes live. This also also cuts down on the number of issues to fix ahead of a release. Although if something should go wrong after something has been pushed to production, feature flags can help.
How does a staging environment differ from a testing or production environment?
While it may sound similar to a test environment, a staging environment exposes your app to more simultaneous tests than with the former. In many cases, a test environment precedes staging in the software development process. And staging tends to more closely resemble a production environment.
The testing environment has a limited amount of parameters in which to explore specific features of the app. The staging environment, on the other hand, is accessible through all possible devices and provides interaction with the app as though it was live (but it's not.)
The idea with a staging environment is, if a bug happens to escape the test environment, then staging can catch it before it gets passed along to customers. New versions and features are often run under staging conditions before final deployment. Teams try painstakingly to replicate production with their staging environments. Unfortunately, no matter how hard you try to simulate production, anomalies can still arise when you finally do put a feature out into the real world.
The test environment is where engineers can execute and monitor many of the most complex, time-intensive tests for the new code being developed while using automated and non-automated techniques. If desired, they can also create multiple environments for parallel tests. In most cases, the testing environment tends to focus on individual components rather than the entirety of the new application in development, often with an emphasis on the compatibility between old and new code.
Meanwhile, the production environment is the final stage of deployment. This is a real-time setting where the latest versions of software, products, or updates are pushed live and made available to the intended end users, such as a company releasing an updated version of an app with new features. The production environment essentially hosts the new app so it can be accessed. (Of course, at LaunchDarkly, we're also big fans of testing in production. More on that here.)
Although it shares a few similarities with these environments, the staging environment is more of a behind-the-scenes, pre-production environment where the new release can be tested for functionality and adjusted before it’s pushed live, all in a setting as close to the production environment as possible.
If you need an analogy (we’re always up for one), think of it like developing a new car model prototype. The test environment is where you would test out things like how the engine performs on its own, how the transmission operates, and so on. The staging environment is the controlled track environment where you test the final prototype to ensure it can properly function and drive. The production environment is where, well… that’s where the car is now for sale and able to be purchased and driven in a normal, real-world setting.
Okay, so maybe not the most spot-on analogy, but you get the idea.
What tests can you do in a staging environment?
The staging environment is used to run a number of important tests, including:
Unit testing
A unit is the smallest testable part of a software system. Unit testing involves testing individual units or components of a software system in isolation to ensure they behave like they’re supposed to. This process helps identify defects and errors in the code early in the development cycle—before integration with other system components.
Overall, this type of testing helps developers ensure their code is maintainable, reusable, and follows good coding practices.
Regression testing
The last thing you want with a new deployment is for it to cause issues with what was already working just fine. Regression testing ensures that new changes or modifications to the system have not created new defects or caused existing functionality to break. Put simply, this testing verifies that the new changes have not screwed up the existing functionality of the software.
Regression testing is typically performed after modifications have been made to the software, such as code changes, bug fixes, new features, or updates to external systems.
Integration testing
Integration testing is used to test the interactions, dependencies, and interfaces between different components or software modules to ensure they integrate and work together as intended. Overall, integration testing pinpoints any issues arising from integrating different components before they can cause problems in the final product.
Chaos testing
By far the funnest-sounding type of testing in a staging environment, chaos testing is meant to gauge the resilience of the new software before the rollout. It involves deliberately introducing controlled failures or disruptions in order to test the new software’s resilience and ability to handle unexpected events such as traffic overload, network failures, or resource exhaustion.
This testing aims to identify potential weaknesses and failure points in a software system before they can cause problems after it’s been deployed to a production environment. This enables developers to better understand how it will behave under stress or unexpected circumstances so they can take steps to improve its reliability and resilience to specific events.
Best practices in a staging environment
CI/CD
Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) is a set of certain techniques and operational methodologies that DevOps teams can utilize to push code in a quick and reliable fashion.
Consistent and automated application development and testing is the primary purpose of continuous integration. It ensures the consistent quality of your code being tested. The continuous delivery completes the pipeline by distributing the applications to the desired locations, but you have to have continuous integration to get there.
Monitoring
Monitoring is more associated with production environments, but you can use it in pre-production environments to ensure code modifications haven’t hindered production environment monitoring.
By monitoring your pre-production environments, including test cases, and alternative user pathways, you can get a good glimpse into what could go wrong when the new code is deployed. Conditionally monitoring all of your dev environments is crucial for teams that want to be agile and streamline workflows.
Debugging and testing
Testing and debugging processes are always essential to the quality assurance of the new code. This can include processes like deliberate logging, bug tracking, and automated testing. Back in the old days, systems were managed manually (and usually on-site with a local machine). However, cloud-based dev environments enable remote access, making it much more convenient and effective, especially when working with staging environments.
Are there limitations to a staging environment?
While staging environments play a key role in development and provide a certain level of confidence in the product before it goes live, it does have some limitations worth noting.
First of all, regardless of how close the staging environment can replicate the production environment, it’s nearly impossible to fully replicate every possible scenario, such as mimicking extremely high volumes of traffic to test how well the software can handle it.
There’s also the risk of the staging environment being built wrong or even used in the wrong way. Plus, the configurations could be off, leading to defects getting released in the production environment. One example of this would be storing code in the staging environment differently than in the production environment, which could throw off your latency tests.
Testing and staging environments are always essential and play a crucial role in the development process. However, in order to get fully accurate data, you need to test in production—this is where feature flags can help.
How do feature flags help test in production?
A feature flag can be used to enable or disable specific functionalities without the need to deploy code. When you wrap a feature in a flag, you can deploy it to the production environment without making it visible to all end users.
Once the flag is live in production, you can run tests or experiments like the ones we’ve reviewed above. If the tests identify an issue, the flag can be toggled off to instantly roll back the problematic feature and prevent it from reaching live end users. This ability makes feature flags essential to safely testing in production.
Safely test in production with LaunchDarkly
LaunchDarky’s feature management platform lets your development team quickly create and manage feature flags when testing code changes in a production environment, giving them a seamless, low-risk way to test changes in production at a high frequency—and on a large scale with several layers of redundancy.
Request a demo today and see for yourself how feature flagging with LaunchDarkly reduces deployment risk by separating deployments from releases.
.webp)
