Environment overview

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What is an environment?

An environment represents a deployment managed by env zero. Your users manage environments in Projects. They can create, destroy, and redeploy environments. The user who creates an environment is the owner. Administrators manage access control and budgets with policies defined at the Project and Organization levels. Here’s how env zero environments map to terms from common IaC tools:

• Terraform: equivalent to a Terraform workspace or module (e.g., a production-vpc workspace)
• Terragrunt: matches a specific Terragrunt configuration directory managing Terraform modules
• CloudFormation: corresponds to a CloudFormation stack
• Pulumi: maps to a Pulumi stack
• Kubernetes: relates to a Kubernetes namespace or a set of YAML files
• Helm: aligns with a Helm release

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View environment details

To view your environments, choose a Project and select the Environments tab. The list shows all environments in the project that you have permission to see. For each environment, you can see the template it came from, the revision (the Git branch with the IaC code), the owner, the status, the remaining time-to-live, and the number of cloud resources currently consumed. Click an environment to open its details page, where you can run operations such as Destroy or Redeploy, view deployment logs, Terraform outputs, variables, and the deployment history.

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Environment status

An environment can be in one of the following states:

• Active - successfully deployed and running
• Inactive - successfully destroyed, manually or automatically
• Deploy in progress - currently being deployed
• Undeploy in progress - currently being destroyed
• Failed - errors encountered during deployment or undeployment
• Waiting for approval - a Planner initiated a change; a Deployer must approve before it executes

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Environment resources

When an environment is Active, you can view all resources it manages by clicking into the environment. Resources are grouped by provider and type, for example, all AWS S3 buckets appear together. Use the search box to filter.

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Time to live (TTL)

TTL is the amount of time before env zero automatically destroys the environment. You set TTL when you create or redeploy. Predefined values are: 12 hours, 1 day, 3 days, 1 week, 1 month, and infinite. You can also set a specific end-of-life date. Infinite TTL means the environment is never automatically destroyed. This is appropriate for stable environments like staging or production, but not recommended for development environments. Administrators can control default and maximum TTL values using TTL policies. Non-admin users are bound by the policy for the current project.

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Terragrunt working directory

The working directory of your Terragrunt deployment. This lets you define one template per repo or folder and create environments based on your Terragrunt folder structure.

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Create an environment

You can create environments two ways: Template-based: Use pre-configured templates for standardized, repeatable deployments with built-in RBAC and governance controls. Recommended for teams that need consistency. Direct VCS integration: Connect directly to your Git repository for quick deployments without template overhead. Useful for prototyping. Both approaches support all IaC frameworks: Terraform, OpenTofu, Pulumi, CloudFormation, Kubernetes, and Helm. For setup instructions, see Setting up a new environment. After the environment is created, the Environment Details page opens and deployment progress appears in the Deployment Logs section. env zero runs terraform plan and terraform apply and stores the outputs and state. If the deployment is successful, the status is set to Active and the owner receives an email notification. If it fails, the status is set to Failed and the owner receives an email with details.

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Destroy an environment

An environment with a TTL other than infinite is automatically destroyed when its time limit is reached. To manually destroy an environment, open the Environment Details page for an Active environment and click Destroy Environment in the top right. If a deploy or destroy is already in progress, your destroy request is queued and starts automatically when the current operation completes. You can cancel a queued destroy from the Deployments tab. When the undeploy completes successfully, the status is set to Inactive and the owner is notified by email. If it fails, the status is set to Failed. When destroying, the “Checkout updated code” option is enabled by default, meaning env zero uses the latest code from your repository. Disable it to use the code from the last deploy.

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Archive an environment

You can archive an environment if you no longer want to track it in env zero. Archiving does not destroy resources. It marks the environment as inactive, removes ongoing and scheduled deployments, and removes it from the project’s environment list. Archived environments appear in the inactive tab on the project environments page. You can unarchive by repeating the process or redeploying.

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Redeploy an environment

To redeploy, navigate to the Environment Details page and click Redeploy in the top right. If a deploy or destroy is in progress, the new deployment is queued and starts after the current operation completes. You can view and cancel queued deployments from the Deployments tab.

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Redeploy an inactive environment

Redeploying an inactive environment runs terraform apply and brings the environment back to Active. A new TTL is required. If the original TTL date has already passed, set a new one before redeploying. You can also set new variable values.

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Redeploy an active environment

Redeploying an active environment applies all code changes from the template. Setting a new TTL is optional. Variable values can also be updated.

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Abort a deployment

To stop an ongoing deploy or destroy, open the Environment Details page and click the red Abort button.

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Cancel queued deployments

When a deploy or destroy is in progress, additional requests enter a Queued state. To cancel a queued action before it starts, click Cancel in the Deployments tab. To cancel all queued deployments at once, use Cancel All Queued Deployments from the environment’s details menu.

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Import an existing environment

Prerequisites:

• Connect your VCS and your cloud account
• Create a template pointing to your Terraform code
• Add variables matching the ones used in the original deployment

1. Go to your Default Organization Project and open the Project Templates page.
2. Find the template you created and click Run Now.
3. Under Workspace Name, enter the existing Terraform workspace name.
4. Uncheck Approve plan automatically to prevent accidental changes.
5. Click Run.

Terraform reads the existing state from your remote backend and generates a plan. If the code and variables match the original deployment, no changes are planned. Click Approve to take ownership, or Cancel to exit.

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Approval flow

For every operation (create, destroy, or redeploy), env zero runs a Terraform plan first. Executing the plan requires approval from a user with Deployer privileges. Deployers and Admins can enable Approve plan automatically to skip the manual approval step. You can set this default in the environment’s Settings tab under General Settings: Planners cannot automatically approve their own plans. When approval is required, the environment status is set to Waiting for approval. A Deployer can then click Deploy to execute the plan or Cancel to discard it.

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Inactive environments

env zero automatically moves destroyed environments to the Inactive list. As an Organization Admin, you can also manually mark an environment as Inactive by clicking the three-dot icon on the Environment page and selecting Mark as Inactive. Marking an environment as Inactive does not remove any infrastructure — it only moves the environment to the Inactive list.

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Deployment comments

You can add a comment when creating, redeploying, destroying, or running tasks on an environment. Comments provide context for why an action was taken and appear in the deployment history. To add a comment, write text in the Comment field: The comment appears on the Deployment page.

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Finding the environment ID

You may need the environment ID when using the Terraform provider or making API calls. Find it in the details card at the top of the environment page.

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Redeploy with a different template

To change the template for an environment, use Redeploy with Different Template from the environment’s context menu. On the Redeploy page, use the drop-down to select the new template.

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Best practices

Development environments: Use short TTLs. Enable continuous deployment for dev branches. Require manual approval only where necessary. Production environments: Use infinite TTL. Require manual approval for all changes. Use environment locking during maintenance windows.

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Next steps

• Setting up a new environment - Create your first environment from a template or VCS.
• Using continuous deployment - Automatically redeploy on every git push.
• Managing variables - Set variables and secrets for your environments.
• Template overview - Define reusable environment configurations.