> This page is for Self-Hosted, version v3.0 (default).
> For other versions, use one of these documentation indexes:
> - v3.0 (default): https://docs.nvidia.com/run-ai/self-hosted/v3.0/llms.txt
> - v2.26: https://docs.nvidia.com/run-ai/self-hosted/v2.26/llms.txt
> - v2.25: https://docs.nvidia.com/run-ai/self-hosted/v2.25/llms.txt
> - v2.24: https://docs.nvidia.com/run-ai/self-hosted/v2.24/llms.txt

> For clean Markdown of any page, append .md to the page URL.
> For a complete documentation index, see https://docs.nvidia.com/run-ai/llms.txt.
> For AI client integration (Claude Code, Cursor, etc.), connect to the MCP server at https://docs.nvidia.com/run-ai/_mcp/server.

# Environment

An environment resource designates the container image, the image pull policy, working directory, security parameters, and others. 
It exposes all the necessary tools (open source, 3rd party, or custom tools) along 
with their connection interfaces including external node port and the container ports.
You can also specify a standard, distributed, or inference workload architecture for the environment.
An environment is a mandatory building block for the creation of a workload.
For more information, see [Environments](/run-ai/self-hosted/documentation/workloads-in-nvidia-run-ai/assets/environments).