| Development (Dev) |
Feature development, experiments, initial debugging |
Small VMs / low-end Kubernetes pods |
Rapid, unchecked deployments. Developers verify functionality. |
| QA / Staging |
Systematic testing, integration checks, regression |
Medium instances, mirrors production scale |
Functional + regression + integration tests. Surfaces config issues before staging. |
| Staging |
Near-production replica, load testing, user acceptance |
Medium-to-large, same images as Prod |
Isolated from live traffic. Performance benchmarking, security scans, stakeholder demos. |
| Production (Prod) |
Live environment serving real users |
Large instances, HA clusters, optional multi-region |
Only thoroughly tested, approved versions deployed. Full DR and scaling policies. |