Gitlab deployment_tier purpose?

Question

Hello can anybody tell me what exactly the deployment_tier for environments is for in gitlab-ci?

https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/yaml/index.html#environmentdeployment_tier https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/environments/index.html#deployment-tier-of-environments

Is this just like a label for the environment or does it actually has any functionality?

Answer 1

It's used primarily for VSA analytics and DORA metrics features of GitLab. By default, GitLab only counts "production" deployments in its metrics and analytics. GitLab determines whether a deployment is "production" or not by the name: of the environment. Basically, if your environment is named "production" or production/* it will be considered a production deployment.

However, some GitLab users may prefer to use a different environment name, such as us-east-1 or whatever for their production environments, but they still want these deployments to be included in the VSA analytics and DORA metrics as "production" deployments. This is where deployment_tier comes in. By setting the deployment_tier to production you can have environments not following the naming pattern to be considered in your VSA analytics and DORA metrics.

TL;DR yes, it is just a label and, aside from metrics/analytics, it does not otherwise materially affect functionality.