Architecture Blueprint - Environments
Physical Separation for Logical Clarity. Even with process boundaries in place, you still need environment boundaries.
Nothing undermines governance faster than an environment free-for-all. I've seen it happen:
- A developer tests a change in staging that accidentally writes to production data.
- Metrics are polluted because test traffic is indistinguishable from real usage.
- Secrets intended for one stage leak into another.
When environments bleed into each other, your process audit trails instantly lose integrity. If you can't trust where a process ran and with what data, you can't trust the audit log.
Headless governance demands physical separation.
The 7 Principles - Environment Governance
Design environments the same way you design processes: clear ownership, clear boundaries, no hidden dependencies.
1. Dedicated subscriptions per environment
Dev, UAT, Prod — each with its own billing, permissions, and telemetry.
2. Replicate the stack across environments
Same architecture, same naming patterns, different data and secrets.
3. Predictable naming conventions
fa-myapp-prodneu-api — no guesswork, no ambiguity.
4. Scoped access via Managed Identity (SAMI)
A function in UAT cannot touch Prod data — not even by accident.
5. Isolated CI/CD pipelines
Forward-only promotions with approval gates.
6. Independent monitoring
Separate dashboards, alerts, and Application Insights instances.
7. Environment-specific configuration
settings.Dev.json, settings.Prod.json — no global config files to "just tweak for testing".
Why this matters - If you can't prove where it ran, you can't prove what it did
In a headless-first architecture, your API is the product, and the process is the source of truth.
A test run can't affect production process logs.
Audit trails reflect the real-world flow they claim to represent.
Each environment can be evaluated, secured, and explained independently.