What are Projects?

Tempest Projects provide a strategic way to organize related resources that work together to support your applications, workflows, and business objectives. While individual resources represent the building blocks of your infrastructure, Projects give you the higher-level view needed to manage complete applications, automated workflows, and cross-team initiatives.

Projects bridge the gap between operational resources and strategic business needs, giving you comprehensive visibility across your entire stack. Whether you’re deploying microservices, automating infrastructure workflows, or managing complex migrations, Projects help you maintain organization and control.

Project Features

Projects offer powerful management capabilities that extend beyond simple resource grouping:

  • Environment Management

    • Define multiple environments (dedicated or ephemeral)
    • Manage environment-specific configurations
    • Support branch-based deployments for applications
  • Security & Configuration

    • Securely store environment variables and secrets
    • Manage certificates and keys
    • Configure access controls and ownership
  • Monitoring & Control

    • Track comprehensive deployment logs
    • View resource provisioning history
    • Monitor project-wide metrics and status

Creating Projects

Projects are automatically generated when users deploy a recipe. The recipe defines which resources belong to the project, establishing a clear relationship between your infrastructure definitions and their deployment.

Currently, projects can only be created through recipe deployments. While this ensures compliance with organizational standards, we understand the need for tracking existing infrastructure. Coming in 2024: The ability to create custom projects for existing infrastructure.

Project Types

Tempest supports two distinct project types, each inherited from their corresponding recipe types:

Application Projects

Application projects are designed for managing software services and applications. They provide:

  • Git Integration

    • Seamless repository connections
    • Branch-based deployment strategies
    • Automated deployment triggers
  • Environment Configuration

    • Global and per-environment variables
    • Secure secrets management
    • Certificate and key handling
  • Deployment Tracking

    • Comprehensive deployment logs
    • Version history
    • Status monitoring

Workflow Projects

Workflow projects orchestrate infrastructure operations and automation tasks. Key features include:

  • Flexible Execution

    • Automated trigger support
    • On-demand execution options
    • User-initiated runs
  • Common Use Cases

    • Infrastructure provisioning
    • Database migrations
    • CI/CD pipeline setup
    • Configuration management

Unlike Application projects, Workflow projects operate independently of Git repositories and focus on infrastructure automation rather than application deployment.