Concepts
Overview

Concepts Overview

This section explains the core concepts and architecture of Onvera. Understanding these concepts will help you use Onvera effectively.

Core Concepts

Environments

An Environment is a logical grouping of deployments. Environments can have different isolation levels (shared infrastructure, dedicated infrastructure, or BYOC).

  • Each organization has one default environment
  • Environments are system-owned and cannot be created or deleted
  • All deployments belong to an environment
  • Different environments can use different isolation levels

Learn more: Environments

Deployments

A Deployment is an instance of an application (Apache Airflow or Apache Superset) running on infrastructure managed by Onvera. Deployments belong to environments.

  • Each deployment has a unique ID
  • Deployments are scoped to an organization and environment
  • Deployments go through a state machine lifecycle
  • Each deployment gets its own database, infrastructure, and subdomain

Learn more: Deployments

Operations

An Operation represents an asynchronous action performed on a deployment or other resource. Operations track the progress of deployments, destructions, and other long-running tasks.

  • Operations are created when you perform actions on deployments (deploy, destroy, etc.)
  • Operations have statuses: queued, running, succeeded, failed, canceled
  • Operations include progress information (phase, message)
  • Operations are linked to resources (deployments, etc.)

Learn more: Operations

Authentication

Onvera supports two authentication methods:

  • JWT - Used by the web UI for browser-based authentication
  • API Keys - Used by the CLI and programmatic access

Learn more: Authentication

How Onvera Works

Onvera provides a control plane that manages the full lifecycle of your data application deployments:

  • Deployment Management: Create, update, and destroy deployments through consistent workflows
  • Infrastructure Provisioning: Automated provisioning of compute, databases, networking, and secrets
  • Application Lifecycle: Manage deployments from creation through retirement
  • Access Control: Centralized user and role management that syncs to applications
  • Observability: Unified view of health, logs, and metrics across deployments
  • Service Control: Start, stop, restart, and scale deployments as needed

All operations are available through the web dashboard, REST API, or CLI, making Onvera ideal for automation and integration into your workflows.

Next Steps

QuickstartEnvironments