Platform concepts
Everything in DevLyft nests inside an organisation. A project holds builds and environments; an environment holds secrets and deploys; each deploy keeps its replicas running on nodes. This page defines each object in a line or two and links to the full guide.
The object model#
Two things to notice. Builds sit on the project, not on an environment, so the same build can be promoted from staging to production. Domains sit on the organisation, so any project can route hostnames under a domain you've verified once.
Definitions#
- Organisation
The top-level account. It owns projects, custom domains, members and their roles, API keys and billing. The dashboard asks you to create one the first time you sign in, and you can belong to several.
- Project
A group of builds, environments and deploys, usually one per application or service.
- Build
A container image and tag, plus the container port and the CPU and memory each replica requests. A build is configuration: nothing runs until it's deployed.
- Environment
A stage of a project, such as
stagingorproduction. It holds that stage's secrets and deploys, and sets the default Tenancy (Shared or Dedicated) for them.- Deployment (deploy)
One build running in one environment and location, with a replica count, tenancy, environment variables and, optionally, public exposure. The dashboard lists them on the Deployments page and calls each one a deploy.
- Replica
One running copy of a build managed by a deploy, shown on the Pods page as a pod. Each replica gets the build's full CPU and memory request.
- Node
A machine replicas run on. Shared nodes are pooled across tenants; dedicated nodes are leased to your organisation alone in a fixed size.
- Location
Where a deploy's replicas run. You choose one per deploy.
- Route
A hostname under a verified domain, optionally with a path prefix, attached to an exposed deploy. Each hostname has one CNAME target to publish.
- Secret
A named, write-only value stored in one environment and injected into deploys as an environment variable of the same name.
Tenancy: shared or isolated#
Tenancy is set on the environment and can be overridden per deploy.
| Dashboard label | Docs term | What you pay for |
|---|---|---|
| Shared | Shared compute | The CPU and memory your replicas request, per second. |
| Dedicated | Isolated compute on dedicated nodes | Each dedicated node, per second while leased. |
| Inherit (deploys only) | Whatever the environment uses | As above. |
How a request reaches your code#
cname_targetWhere each object lives in the dashboard#
| Object | Dashboard page | Sidebar group |
|---|---|---|
| Organisation | Organisation switcher (top bar), Team | Organisation |
| Project, environment | Projects | Applications |
| Build | Builds | Applications |
| Deploy, route | Deployments | Applications |
| Domain | Domains | Infrastructure |
| Secret | Secrets | Infrastructure |
| Node | Nodes | Infrastructure |
| Replica | Pods | Infrastructure |
| Usage, invoices | Billing | Organisation |