# Lifecycle Deployment Best Practices

The following best practices are based on recommendations used in successful deployments. Success comes from the coordinated effort of your developers and open-source governance champions. The Customer Success team can help tailor and plan to meet your organization's needs.

Review the best practices for each phase of your deployment.

- Project Initiation (1st month)
- Project Pilot (first 2 months)
- Project Commencement (1st year)

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## Architecture Overview

The Sonatype Lifecycle solution is comprised of the following components:

| Server infrastructure | Description |
| --- | --- |
| Sonatype IQ Server | - UI configuration and reporting service |
| external Postgres database (optional) | - recommended for production environments |
| reverse proxy | - SSL termination and load balancing |
| outbound data connection | - connection to Sonatype data services<br>  <br>- 443 TCP to [https://clm.sonatype.com](https://clm.sonatype.com/) |
| **Integrations** |  |
| ci/build servers | - evaluate applications during the build<br>  <br>- automatic policy enforcement |
| ticketing or reporting tools | - Jira, SCM, email, Slack, Webhooks, etc.<br>  <br>- for automated governance workflows |
| development tools | - Sonatype Firewall, ide plugins, chrome plugin, etc.<br>  <br>- shifting policy left |

### Best practices to consider when deploying the Sonatype IQ Server

- The [Getting Started](https://help.sonatype.com/en/getting-started.html "Getting Started") checklist can be used to help prepare for deployment.

- For enterprise customers, we recommend using an [external Postgres database](https://help.sonatype.com/en/external-database-configuration.html "External Database Configuration").

- [Cloud deployments](https://help.sonatype.com/en/container-deployments.html "Sonatype Container Deployment - Lifecycle") for AWS, Docker, Red Hat, and Helm charts.