There are many environments/servers running Torus, both on the ASU (Argos) side and OLI (CMU) side. This document attempts to break them down and explain the uses.
These environments are run and managed by Mia and Unicon
This the the production environment, where we have live courses running. This is the most stable of all of the instances, with code updates 3-4 times a year (not including potential hot fixes).
https://torus.qa.argos.education/
This is the testing environment, where we perform most of the QA and testing. The code is constantly being updated, normally twice a week, if not more often. There are no live courses or students in this server, it is only used for testing.
When bug fixes and feature requests tickets are ready for testing, we test in this environment. Also, when we hit code freeze before a release and do our first couple rounds of QA, we use this environment.
https://torus.stage.argos.education/
This is the staging environment, where we perform the final tests on the code before a release. In general, this server is only “online” in the few weeks before a release. After the release, we will turn off stage again to save on cost
Before a release, once we have a week or two of stability during testing on the QA environment, we turn on stage and update the code to the new release. Then we perform another round or two of testing to make sure everything is stable before the release.
In the past, other environments have been brought online, such as Demo. As of right now there are none online, so nothing to worry about.
This is the production environment for OLI, where live courses are running. The release version on Proton is normally the same release as on Argos Prod, although they will normally accept each release a few weeks to a month before it is accepted on Prod.