What is a Staging Environment?
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When developers want to test new code and how it might function in the real world, they can’t do so on live servers. That’s because the corresponding apps might crash if there are significant bugs, a delay no business can afford.
A staging environment definition refers to an almost identical version of the production environment so that developers can test the new technical architecture reliably before they deploy it to a live server.
What is a staging environment
To build an effective staging environment, you should seek to replicate your production environment as closely as possible. This means your servers, databases, and hardware should all be configured to the same technical parameters.
Staging environments are important because real-life users are quick to dismiss buggy applications or websites that take too long to load. If you can test your code in an environment that’s exactly like the one your users are on, then that’s a surefire way of eliminating any problems by identifying them at an early stage.
Staging environments are necessary for QA engineers to do their jobs properly too. If they’re to be tasked with finding and fixing software bugs, then they should have access to the same environment as real users. Only then can they receive the same user experience and deduce whether the upgraded code is bereft of errors or not.
However, no matter how perfect your staging environment, it’s still possible that it won’t be able to predict real-world scenarios efficiently. For example, spikes in traffic may cause your application or website to crash and the reasons behind this spike cannot always be ascertained. Nonetheless, you must test your code rigorously before releasing it.
