Astro Environment Manager overview | Astronomer Documentation

The Astro Environment Manager is a built-in secrets backend that you use in the Astro UI to create Airflow connections, Airflow variables, environment variables, and metrics exports, then share them across multiple Deployments and Astro IDE projects. The Environment Manager stores each object in an Astro-managed secrets backend, so you can create objects once and reuse them without setting up your own secrets backend.

Using the Environment Manager, you can configure an object with the credentials for a sandbox or development environment, apply it to all Deployments in a Workspace by default, and later override its values to point to production resources on a per-Deployment basis. When you create new Deployments, they automatically have access to any objects that are linked to all Deployments in the Workspace.

To open the Environment Manager, click Environment in the left menu of the Astro UI.

What you can manage

The Environment Manager supports the following object types. See the corresponding page for each type’s full capabilities, prerequisites, and permissions:

Airflow connections: Store credentials and configuration for connecting to external services. See Create Airflow connections in the Astro UI.
Airflow variables: Store and retrieve arbitrary content or settings as key-value pairs within Airflow. See Create Airflow variables in the Astro UI.
Environment variables: Store key-value configurations that configure Airflow settings, store credentials, or pass configuration to your Dags. See Create environment variables in the Astro UI.
Metrics exports: Send Deployment metrics to an external monitoring tool. See Export metrics from Astro.

Creating these objects in the Astro UI, rather than the Airflow UI, lets you share them across Deployments and Astro IDE projects, override their values per Deployment or project, and use them in local development and branch-based deploys.

How objects are stored

Astro stores each object in an Astronomer-hosted secrets manager and applies it to Deployments as a Kubernetes Secret. See How connections are stored, How variables are stored, and How environment variables are stored for the mechanics of each object type.

Use objects in local development

The Astro CLI can retrieve connections and variables from the Astro UI for use in local Airflow environments. By default, connections can’t be exported locally. To work with connections locally, an Organization Owner can enable Environment Secrets Fetching in the Astro UI. See Import and export connections and variables.

Link objects to Astro IDE projects

In addition to Deployments, you can link Workspace-level objects to Astro IDE projects. When you link an object to an Astro IDE project, the project’s ephemeral test Deployments start with that object available, without affecting Deployments that aren’t started from the IDE. See Link connections to Astro IDE projects.

For Remote Execution Deployments, you can only manage environment variables and Metrics export with the Environment Manager. You can’t create, update, or assign Airflow connections or Airflow variables.

Migrate and promote existing objects

If you already define connections, Airflow variables, or environment variables in a Deployment, you can move them into the Environment Manager so that they can be reused across Deployments and Astro IDE projects. You can also promote a Deployment-scoped object to the Workspace level to reuse it elsewhere. See Migrate existing objects to the Environment Manager.