The Recommended Way to Isolate Environments (dev, qa, prod) in Google Cloud Platform

The recommended approach for isolating environments in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is to create separate GCP projects for each environment. This method might seem like a simple organizational step, but it’s much more than that. It’s a fundamental practice that helps in managing resources, controlling access, and ensuring security across your cloud infrastructure.

1. Understanding Development, QA, and Production Environments

Before we dive into why isolating environments by project is the go-to method, let’s break down what these environments are, and why they’re so critical to your operations.

1. Development Environment (Dev): The development environment is where all the action begins. It’s the first stop for any code change, where developers write, test, and debug their applications. It is a playground where developers can test new ideas, develop new features and experiment. This environment is designed to be flexible, allowing for frequent changes and experimentation. It’s not uncommon for the development environment to be unstable, as it’s constantly evolving with new features and fixes.
2. Quality Assurance (QA) Environment: Once the code is tested and refined in Dev, it moves to the QA environment. This stage is all about making sure the code works as intended in a production-like setting. The goal is to catch any bugs or unintended issues before the code goes live. The QA environment closely mirrors the production environment, but without the risk of impacting real users. Here, the code undergoes rigorous testing, including automated tests, integration tests, and user acceptance testing (UAT).
3. Production Environment (Prod): The production environment is where your application or service runs live for your end-users. This is the most critical environment—everything here needs to be stable, secure, and scalable. Any issues in the production environment can directly affect your users and, consequently, your business. Therefore, only the most thoroughly tested code should make its way to production.

Example of a stream-line workflow to fix a bug detected in live application, using Development (DEV), Quality Assurance (QA) and Production (PROD) environment

2. Google Cloud Structure: Organizations, Folders, and Projects

Understanding GCP’s hierarchy is key to seeing why this approach works so well. Google Cloud Platform is structured around organizations, folders, and projects.

At the core of this structure is the project—a container for all resources like VMs, databases, and storage, along with their associated settings such as permissions and billing.

• Projects: Projects are where your resources live. They are isolated from each other, which is why using separate projects for different environments is so effective.
• Folders: Folders help organize projects. You might have a folder for each department or product, and within those folders, separate projects for Dev, QA, and Prod.
• Organizations: This is the top-level container of all your Google Cloud resources. It represents your company and holds all your resources in Google Cloud.

3. Here’s why Google Cloud recommends creating separate GCP projects for each different environment:?

• Complete Isolation: By using separate projects for each environment, you ensure that resources are completely isolated. This means that a mistake in the Dev environment won’t accidentally affect the QA or Prod environments. This isolation is crucial for maintaining stability and security, especially in production.
• Granular Access Control: Each project has its own set of permissions. By separating environments into different projects, you can manage who has access to what. For instance, developers might have full access to the Dev environment but only read access to Prod. This reduces the risk of accidental changes in critical environments.
• Simplified Resource Management: Managing resources becomes easier when they are isolated by project. You can track costs, monitor usage, and manage quotas more effectively. This separation also simplifies billing, as each project can be linked to different billing accounts or budgets.
• Enhanced Security: With each environment in its own project, you can tailor security policies to the needs of that environment. For example, you might have stricter firewall rules and monitoring in Prod compared to Dev, where flexibility is more important.

4. The Impact on CI/CD

Using separate projects for each environment can streamline your Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) processes. For example, you can set up your CI/CD pipelines in a way that code is automatically promoted from Dev to QA and finally to Prod, with each environment isolated to prevent cross-contamination.

• Consistent Naming Conventions: Implementing a clear naming convention, such as MyApp-Dev, MyApp-QA, and MyApp-Prod, helps in organizing your resources and keeping track of deployments. This approach is especially useful when using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like Terraform or deployment pipelines in Cloud Build.
• Streamlined Deployments: With isolated projects, deployments become less risky. You can test thoroughly in QA without worrying about impacting Prod. Once everything checks out, you can promote the code to Prod with confidence, knowing that it’s been tested in an environment that closely mirrors production.

Conclusion

By isolating your environments by Google Cloud Projects, you’re setting up your cloud infrastructure to be more resilient, secure, and scalable, ensuring that your applications run smoothly from development all the way to production.