vastai-multi-env-setup

Vast.ai Environment Isolation

Overview

Vast.ai does not turn naming conventions into isolation automatically. Build the boundary from team/account context, scoped keys, immutable template hashes, labels, data prefixes, budgets, and promotion evidence.

Prerequisites

• Environment owners, sensitivity, workloads, regions, budgets, and approved accounts or teams
• Separate keys, SSH identities, storage prefixes, templates, registries, and alert routes
• Promotion, break-glass, rollback, and access-review procedures

Instructions

Step 1: Define environment identity

Assign each environment an explicit team/account context, key IDs, labels, data prefix, budget, and owner. Reject implicit current context.

Step 2: Separate credentials

Create environment-specific scoped keys and dedicated SSH access. Production credentials must never be available to development jobs or forked CI.

Step 3: Version templates and images

Use immutable image digests and template hashes. Promote the same bytes by recorded identity rather than rebuilding for each environment.

Step 4: Constrain data and resources

Use distinct checkpoint/storage prefixes, resource labels, Serverless IDs, and notifications. Validate that a dev key cannot read or mutate production.

Step 5: Promote through evidence

Require dev tests, staging canary, recovery, cost, and security receipts before a production role references the candidate identity.

Step 6: Audit drift

Regularly compare members, roles, keys, templates, active resources, labels, budgets, and stale environment variables across contexts.

Authentication

Environment isolation depends on distinct scoped credentials and explicit team/account context. Never infer environment only from a filename, branch, or mutable image tag.

Tool Discipline

Use Read and Grep to inspect manifests, configuration, provider output, and existing tests before proposing a mutation. Use Write or Edit only for the approved plan, implementation, test, or redacted receipt; do not create, update, destroy, or fund Vast.ai resources without explicit operator approval.

Output

• Environment authority and resource map
• Cross-environment positive/negative access tests
• Promotion, drift, exception, and rollback receipt

Return environment contexts, role/key IDs, immutable release identity, data prefixes, access tests, budget owners, and promotion state.

Examples

Staging and production use different team contexts and keys but promote the identical template hash; a staging key's attempted production instance read is retained as an expected denial.

Error Handling

Resources

• First-party source notes
• Teams overview
• CLI permissions
• Managing templates