Preview Environments
End-to-end isolation

Preview environments that behave like production — without touching production.

Branch any environment into isolated slates, route traffic safely, and attach managed services — with AI-assisted provisioning, data seeding, and debugging.

Create a Slate
Production Staging Dev Perf Testing SLATE staging-slate / PR-128 SLATE dev-slate / release-rc Edge Gateway Env Router Slate Router + Branch Slate

Click an environment to branch a slate

See it in action

Create slate → Deploy → Test → Promote

90s overview

The Two Primitives

Dedicated Environments vs Slates

Understand when to create a long-lived dedicated environment versus an ephemeral slate branch.

DEDICATED: Performance Testing Isolated Network Dedicated Ingress COMPUTE POOL Svc A Svc B COST CENTER team: platform $2,450 / month perf.internal.celeris.app

Dedicated Environment

Long-lived, isolated, team-owned. Ideal for performance testing, security review, regional rehearsal, or compliance-sensitive workloads.

Isolated network segment

Full network isolation with dedicated egress policies

Dedicated ingress hostnames

Custom DNS with separate TLS certificates

Separate cost center tags

Full FinOps visibility and billing attribution

Optional dedicated compute pools

Reserved capacity for consistent performance

Isolation Level

Adjust isolation for your compliance requirements

Shared control plane, isolated runtime: Slates share the Celeris control plane but run in isolated runtime environments. Network policies enforce strict east-west boundaries.

Traffic Flow

How requests route into environments and slates

Understand the complete request journey from edge to your services, with intelligent routing at every hop.

DNS: staging.celeris.app
DNS: pr-128.staging.celeris.app
Edge/CDN
Gateway
Env Router
Slate Router
Services
Host-based routing
Host: pr-128.staging.*
Header-based routing
X-Slate-Id: pr-128
Traffic weights
10% → slate, 90% → base

Policy Enforcement

Only test traffic routes to slate. Production traffic never touches slate environments. Enforced at the Env Router layer.

Open PR → Preview URL resolves → Request routes to slate

Slates

Multi-app branching with cohesive isolation

A Slate is a branch of an environment, scoped to a set of apps and components with consistent routing and dependencies.

Source Environment

Staging

12 services active

Dev

8 services active

staging-slate / release-candidate

Branched from Staging • TTL: 7 days

Active
api-gateway
v2.4.1
Healthy 3 replicas
user-service
v1.8.0
Healthy 2 replicas
order-service
v3.2.0
Healthy 2 replicas

Bound Managed Services

NeonDB Branch

slate-rc-postgres

Redis Cache

slate-rc-redis

release-candidate.staging.celeris.app

Slate Lifecycle

Create
Bind Services
Deploy Revisions
4
Run Tests
5
Promote or Discard
Data Strategies

Data you can trust and isolate

Branch databases when possible, seed fixtures when not. AI recommends the right strategy based on your datastore and compliance needs.

Staging DB PostgreSQL 12.4 GB Branch in 2s Slate DB Branch slate-pr-128-postgres Copy-on-write Instant branch creation Data changes are isolated Easy diff/cleanup on teardown

Database Branching with Neon

Neon's copy-on-write branching creates instant database branches without copying data. Changes in the slate are fully isolated from the parent.

Fast Branch Creation

Branches are created in seconds, regardless of database size. No data copying required.

Complete Isolation

All writes in the slate branch are isolated. Parent database is never affected.

Celeris Bindings

DATABASE_URL injected via binding, not raw secrets. Full identity, audit, and cost tracking.

Create slate → Neon branch created → Seed job → Open app

Integrations

Attach managed services with identity built in

Connect databases, caches, queues, and storage from the Celeris Marketplace. Each binding includes identity, audit, and cost allocation.

Slate: staging-slate / PR-128

Drop integrations here to bind

NeonDB

Branched from staging-pg

Identity bound Audit enabled Cost: $12/mo
Upstash Redis

Isolated instance

Identity bound Audit enabled Cost: $5/mo

Binding Created

Your services access integrations via environment variable bindings, not raw secrets.

DATABASE_URL REDIS_URL

Available Integrations

Click to attach to slate

BigQuery

Analytics warehouse

Kafka

Event streaming

GCS / S3

Object storage

Pub/Sub

Message queues

Cost impact: Isolated copies add cost. AI can recommend shared vs isolated.

AI-First

AI that plans, provisions, and debugs

Celeris AI understands your environment structure, recommends slate configurations, and enforces guardrails automatically.

Try a prompt

Celeris AI

Generating slate configuration...

Ready
slate.yaml
# Generated by Celeris AI
apiVersion: slates.celeris.io/v1
kind: Slate
metadata:
  name: release-candidate
  parentEnv: staging
spec:
  apps:
    - api-gateway@v2.4.1
    - user-service@v1.8.0
    - order-service@v3.2.0
  bindings:
    - name: database
      service: neon://staging-pg
      strategy: branch
    - name: cache
      service: upstash://redis
  ttl: 7d
  routing:
    host: release-candidate.staging.celeris.app

Guardrails Applied

Isolated from prod by policy
Egress restricted to allowlist
Audit retention: 30 days
Cost allocation tagged

Review and apply this configuration

AI suggests slate → Binds services → Creates URL → Adds tests

Testing & Gates

Gates that validate before promotion

Preview environments are valuable because they run tests and validate. Configure gates for smoke, e2e, load tests, and more.

Preview URL

Created

Smoke Tests

12/12 passed

E2E Tests

Running 8/24...

Load Tests

Pending

Promote

Awaiting gates

Smoke Test Config

Timeout 5m
Required Yes
Parallelism 4

E2E Test Config

Timeout 15m
Required Yes
Retries 2

Load Test Thresholds

p99 Latency < 200ms
Error Rate < 0.1%
RPS > 1000

AI Suggestion

Test checkout-flow.spec.ts has been flaky (2 failures in last 10 runs). Consider adding retry logic or reviewing the test setup.

Security & Governance

Enterprise-grade isolation, not just PR previews

Identity boundaries, network policies, mTLS, egress controls, and comprehensive audit logs for every slate.

Zero-Trust by Default

Every slate operates within strict identity and network boundaries. Access is never assumed, always verified.

Identity Boundaries

Per-environment and per-slate identity scopes. Services authenticate with scoped credentials.

OIDC tokens Service accounts

Network Policies

East-west traffic rules enforced at the mesh layer. Optional mTLS for service-to-service.

NetworkPolicy mTLS

Egress Controls

Allowlist-based egress policies prevent data exfiltration. AI can recommend safe egress rules.

Domain allowlist IP ranges

Audit Logs

Every action logged: slate creation, binding, deploy, access. Configurable retention, SIEM export.

30-90 day retention Export to S3/GCS

Preview URL Access Controls

  • SSO required for access
  • IP allowlist support
  • Time-bound access links

BYOC Deployment

Run preview environments in your own cloud account for data residency and compliance.

AWS
GCP
Azure
Supported clouds
Use Cases

Choose your scenario

See how preview environments and slates adapt to different workflows.

PR Preview for Single Service

Create a lightweight slate for each PR. Automatically deploy, test, and share a preview URL for code review.

Environment Type

Ephemeral Slate

Parent Environment

Staging

Data Strategy

Shared with isolation

TTL

7 days (auto-extend on activity)

Included Applications

api-gateway

Test Gates

Smoke Tests Unit Tests

Ready to try this scenario?

What you might have missed

SSO access controls

Restrict preview URLs to authenticated users

TTL cleanup policies

Auto-destroy after configurable period

Cost tracking per slate

Full FinOps visibility and attribution

Reproducible templates

Infrastructure as code for slate setup

Ready to branch your stack?

Branch environments like code.

Create your first slate in minutes. Deploy, test, validate, and promote — with AI-assisted provisioning and enterprise-grade isolation.

Built for enterprise-scale distributed systems

SOC 2 Type II
GDPR Compliant
BYOC Available
99.99% SLA