> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.skyhook.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Static Environments

> Long-lived environments like dev, staging, and prod used by the whole team for structured development and production workflows.

Static environments are the **long-lived** environments a team shares for structured workflows — the typical `dev`, `staging`, `prod` trio, plus any regional, customer-specific, or role-specific environments you add.

The distinction between static and [preview](/application/environments/preview) environments is whether they're meant to stick around:

|                          | Static                 | Preview                     |
| ------------------------ | ---------------------- | --------------------------- |
| **Lifetime**             | Persistent             | Ephemeral                   |
| **Overlay**              | Base + per-env patches | `deploy/overlays/ephemeral` |
| **Readiness monitoring** | Tracked                | Excluded                    |
| **Global AutoDeploy**    | Supported              | Not applicable              |
| **Namespace on delete**  | Preserved              | Removed                     |

Both types are managed from the [Environments](/application/environments/overview) page — they show up in the same table and use the same create/edit/delete flows.

## Creating static environments

See the main [Environments overview](/application/environments/overview#creating-an-environment) for the create dialog walkthrough, including:

* Cluster and namespace selection
* Labels for grouping and filtering
* Cloning deployment configuration from a source environment (strategy, resources, autoscaling, health checks, ArgoCD config)

## Common static environment setups

**Single cluster, multiple environments by namespace** — the classic: one cluster with `dev`, `qa`, `staging`, `prod` namespaces. Simple, cheap, good for small teams. Enable **environment name prefix** if you want to collapse this further into a single namespace.

**Per-environment cluster** — each environment gets its own cluster. Better isolation, higher cost. Common for regulated workloads where prod must be on a separate network.

**Regional fleet** — multiple regional environments (`us-east`, `eu-west`, `ap-southeast`) deployed to regional clusters. Use [labels](/application/environments/overview#labels-and-label-based-deployments) to deploy to all of them at once (e.g. `region:prod` label on every production regional environment).

**Customer-specific** — per-customer environments, each with its own cluster or namespace, labeled by customer. Label-based deployments let you roll out to every customer or a specific customer cohort.

## Deploying to a static environment

Clicking a static environment in the sidebar opens the environment deployment page — the same page used for preview environments. See [Deploying Services](/application/services/deploy) for the deploy flow.

## Production readiness and static environments

[Production Readiness Checks](/application/production-readiness/overview) only apply to static environments. When enabling readiness for a service, ephemeral environments are filtered out of the selection dialog — readiness scores wouldn't be meaningful on a 24-hour preview anyway.

## Best practices

* **Clear naming** — stick to lowercase-and-hyphens (`dev`, `staging`, `prod-us-east`) so names work as Kubernetes namespaces and DNS labels without mangling.
* **Labels over sprawl** — as the fleet grows, consistent labels (`region:us-east`, `role:prod`, `team:payments`) save you from writing per-environment rules.
* **Clone when adding siblings** — cloning deployment strategy, resources, autoscaling, and health checks keeps new environments consistent with existing prod-like environments without retyping.
* **AutoDeploy on dev, not prod** — enable AutoDeploy on `dev` so every commit lands automatically. Keep `staging` and `prod` manual (or gated through PR reviews) so rollouts are deliberate.