Environments overview
An environment is a secure, isolated runtime context created automatically when you deploy and run a NetFoundry Frontdoor agent on your infrastructure.
It serves as the foundation for all your service sharing, providing the secure tunnel and cryptographic identity (known as a zId) needed to connect your backend services to the NetFoundry network. This allows you to create shares that make your services publicly accessible without requiring any inbound firewall ports.
Environment architecture
Integration with other components
Relationship with shares
Environments serve as the foundation for shares, with every share requiring association with a specific Environment to function properly. Shares route traffic through their associated environment to reach backend services, and when an environment is deleted, all its shares immediately become inaccessible.
Connection to agents
Frontdoor agents create and manage the environment by automatically creating an environment during installation while maintaining the secure connection that keeps the environment operational. Agent configuration directly affects environment behavior and capabilities, and although stopping an agent doesn't delete the environment, it renders the environment inaccessible until the agent is restarted.
Frontend integration
Environments work with Frontends through shares to create a complete connectivity path from the public internet to your private services. Frontends receive public traffic and route it to shares, while shares use environments to deliver that traffic securely to your backend services.