Environments use versioning and can be activated independently from service hostname sets so you don’t need to unnecessarily affect any unrelated components when making rule configuration changes. An environment version acts as a versioned state of a rule set configuration, and when you create a new version, your rules receive the most up-to-date behavior settings.

Once an environment version is activated, its rule configuration and associated component configurations (like variables) become read-only. You create a new environment version whenever you need to make a configuration change to an active version. The new version enters a draft state and remains a draft until it’s activated.

Create an environment version

To create a new environment version:

1. From the Control Center menu, click Content delivery > CDN > Delivery Manager.
2. In the Workspaces tab, click the workspace that contains the environment you want to edit.
3. Go to the Environments tab, and click the environment you want to edit.
4. Click Add version.
5. Add any optional release notes for your new version. Notes are logged and recorded in the environment and workspace activity feeds.
6. Click Create version #.
7. Once you're ready with all updates, click the global Save at the top of the page.

Switching between environment versions

Environment versions are logged in a version history as point-in-time snapshots of your environment configuration. You can view your environment version history by selecting a version number from the version dropdown on your environment page.

When switching between versions, your environment configuration changes depending on the version number you select. Any associated versioned components, like sets of variables used with that environment version, also revert to their previously used state. For example, if v2 of your environment used v2 of a set of variables, you’ll see v2 of your variables if you switch to v2 of your environment.

Catalog updates

Akamai regularly updates its rule catalog of behaviors and criteria, each time deploying new internal versions of the feature. Updates to the catalog are always backward compatible and never contain breaking changes to previous rule versions.

When you make a new environment version, you automatically get the latest version of Akamai’s catalog of features. Any new or changed behaviors and criteria are assigned default values in the background, so you don’t need to make adjustments to your existing configuration.

Unactivated environment versions

Delivery Manager lets you iterate on your environment configurations with versioning. Each new environment version automatically receives and locks in the latest catalog updates at the time of creation.

If you choose to leave an environment version unactivated, it won’t receive catalog updates. For example, if you make v3 of an environment, don’t activate v3, proceed to make v4, and activate v4, v3 is locked into that point in time and doesn’t get updates to its behaviors. As a best practice, it’s not recommended to leave older, unactivated environment versions in your version history.