Environments

Your own environment in seconds. In Kaja, environments are where your apps run. You spin them up when you need them and tear them down—or pause them—when you're done. No more waiting on DevOps. No more paying for idle resources. This page is about environments; for container apps and Helm apps in depth, see Apps.

What is an environment?

An environment is your own isolated space on a cluster. Think of it like a folder for a project or a branch: everything you deploy (container apps, Helm charts) lives inside that environment. Each environment is separate from the others, so you can have a "dev" env, a "staging" env, or a personal env per developer—all on the same cluster, all manageable from one dashboard.

What you get:

• Spin up in seconds — Create an environment from the dashboard. Kaja sets it up on the cluster you chose. You can start deploying apps right away.
• Pause when you're done — Stop paying for idle resources. Pause the whole environment (everything in it stops) or pause individual apps. Resume whenever you need to work again. Cost savings happen automatically.
• Freeze when you need to lock it — Make an environment read-only so nobody can change it (e.g. for a release). Unfreeze when you're ready to edit again.

You create environments per cluster. Pick the cluster, give the environment a name, and you're set.

Creating an environment

1. In Kaja, open your organization and select the cluster where you want the environment.
2. Go to Environments and click Create environment.
3. Enter a name (e.g. dev, staging, alice-preview) and, if you like, a display name.
4. Optionally start paused if you don't want anything running until you're ready.
5. Submit. Kaja creates the environment and you can start adding apps.

That's it. No tickets, no manual namespace creation—just one place to spin up and manage.

Pause and resume

Pause stops everything in that environment so you're not paying for idle dev or preview workloads. Use the pause action in the console for the environment (or for a single app). Resume brings it back when you need it. This is how Kaja drives automated cost savings—you stay in control, and you stop paying when you're not using the env.

You can pause the whole environment or just one container app. Your choice.

Freeze and unfreeze

Freeze makes the environment read-only: everyone can view it, but nobody can change apps or config from the dashboard. Useful when you've locked a branch or a release. Unfreeze when you want to edit again. The cluster keeps running; only the ability to change things from Kaja is turned off.

What runs inside: apps

Inside an environment you deploy container apps (from images) and Helm apps (from charts). Both show up in the same environment in the dashboard—create them, pause them, update them, and view logs and metrics from one place. For a full breakdown of app features (replicas, env vars, probes, autoscaling, sidecars, expose, values, and more), see Apps.

Summary

One place. Spin up when you need it. Pause when you're done. That's the value.

Next steps

• Apps — Container apps and Helm apps in depth—features, config, and observability.
• Helm — Deploy and manage Helm charts in your environments.
• Logs & metrics — See what's happening in your apps.
• Quick start — End-to-end from sign-up to first environment and app.