Policies

A job's policy says who gives the go-ahead when git and the cluster differ. Set it with nops_policy (meta keys).

Policy	What Nops does
auto	Deploys on its own.
approval	Creates a deployment and waits for a person to approve it on the dashboard. Never deploys on its own.
none	Shows the drift and deploys nothing. The default.

The policy only decides who says go. Every deployment then runs the same way (architecture).

Which policy for which job

Job	Policy
Stateless service (frontend, API, proxy)	auto
Stateful service, database, job with a volume	approval
Job you manage by hand	none
Batch or periodic	auto, or approval if it touches data

Sync window

A sync window limits when an auto job deploys on its own, for example only during working hours:

nops_sync_window          = "0 9 * * 1-5" # opens weekdays at 09:00
nops_sync_window_duration = "9h"          # and stays open until 18:00

• The cron expression says when the window opens, with the syntax of Nomad's periodic. The duration says how long it stays open.
• Nops reads windows in -sync-window-time-zone, UTC by default.
• Outside the window, Nops still shows the drift but starts no deployment: the job is Held. When the window opens, Nops plans again from git.
• Deploy now, on the job's dashboard page, deploys the drift shown there once, like any deployment, without waiting for the window. If git changes first, the job stays held. It doesn't lift a pause or a block.
• A deployment that already started finishes even if the window closes.
• Under approval, Nops ignores the window: the approval is the gate.

Pausing a job

Pause a job from its dashboard page to stop Nops from undoing a manual fix during an incident. While a job is paused:

• Nops shows the drift but starts no deployment;
• you can't approve its pending deployment, but you can reject it;
• a deployment already running finishes.

Resume releases the job, and Nops plans again from git. Anyone whose token has pause on the job's namespace (ACL) can pause and resume, from the dashboard or the API, and Nops records who did it.

Pause in the Overview pauses every job at once, for a Nomad upgrade or an incident that spans several jobs. It holds the jobs added to git in the meantime too. Every page says that Nops is paused, since when, and by whom. Resume releases it, and a job paused on its own stays paused. It needs the pause capability outside the namespaces (ACL).

Approval

Approve or reject a deployment from its dashboard page, which shows the diff and what approving does. An approval covers that exact diff: if git or the live job changes first, Nops replaces the deployment with a new one to approve (revalidation).