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Is it realistic to launch a whole staging environment on the same dedicated server that is in production on a low traffic/load server?

Since the app we made just launched a few days ago, we would like to save some of the cost of buying another dedicated server just for staging runs since the traffic is less than 50% of the maximum server load.

We were thinking about launching up a docker container that would spin up all the docker containers running, on the production box and running all the tests on that. Then if the tests pass the build is deployed and the container is destroyed.

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Ask yourself this question:

Is any downtime due to the staging containers taking down production worth the extra cost savings?

For some it might be OK. But for me it is not. A problem in staging could end up being a problem in production. A runaway process, accidentally using the production database when you wanted staging, killing the wrong container, etc..

It is most certainly possible. I don't think anything technically prevents you from doing this and I have done it in the past. But I have also been bitten by this before and can usually convince others that separating the environments is worth the slight extra cost.

Along the same lines, it is usually a good idea to make sure that you are keeping environment parity as close as possible. I buy into the Twelve-Factor application and http://12factor.net/dev-prod-parity might be relevant here as well.

So to answer the question at hand, is it realistic? Sure, in that it is possible and true that it will work. Is it recommended? Not in my opinion.

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