# How do you handle different "environments"

**URL:** <https://hub.mender.io/t/how-do-you-handle-different-environments/6726>\
**Category:** General Discussions\
**Created:** [April 11, 2024, 10:32am UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/how-do-you-handle-different-environments/6726 "2024-04-11T10:32:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![mnbbrown](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/hub.mender.io/mnbbrown/32/2160_2.png) [@mnbbrown](https://hub.mender.io/u/mnbbrown)\
**Post date:** [April 11, 2024, 10:32am UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/how-do-you-handle-different-environments/6726/1 "2024-04-11T10:32:48Z")

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Interested in how you approach different “environments”. For example, we have a bunch of “sandbox” devices that we deploy images onto during development. We’d like to keep these separate from “production” devices in the field. We used hosted mender.

Ideas I have so far:

- Different hosted mender accounts for each environment
- Different “device types”

How have others approached this?

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**Author:** ![huguespoiget](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/hub.mender.io/huguespoiget/32/1691_2.png) [@huguespoiget](https://hub.mender.io/u/huguespoiget)\
**Post date:** [April 12, 2024, 8:12am UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/how-do-you-handle-different-environments/6726/2 "2024-04-12T08:12:02Z")

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Interested into the same ! For now all the devices are mixed into a single group which led to some issues already.

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**Author:** ![TheYoctoJester](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/hub.mender.io/theyoctojester/32/1444_2.png) [@TheYoctoJester](https://hub.mender.io/u/TheYoctoJester)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2024, 6:54am UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/how-do-you-handle-different-environments/6726/3 "2024-04-15T06:54:47Z")

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Hi @mnbbrown and @huguespoiget,

Thanks for reaching out! It actually depends a bit on the use case. A few strategies:

- if users can choose the desired environment themselves, like opt-in to a beta channel, then have the devices add a property to the inventory and use that as group criterion. This needs dynamic groups.
- different Hosted Mender accounts. This is obviously the strongest separation, but requires additional coordination, and devices don’t move that easily between environments.
- different device types are an interesting approach too. Especially if there are “debug builds” being deployed to those or the sandbox devices have additional hardware facilities, then this is a good way to go.
- multi-tenancy is on the roadmap, so in the long run it might solve the problem in the future, but its not available yet ☹

If you have a very specific need or use case, happy to discuss that!

Greets,  
Josef