It is very useful to have different Drupal configurations in different environments. The easiest way to do this is via setting values in the $conf array in settings.php. For my site builds I generally create a sites/default/config directory that contains the per environment settings. When working with Acquia Cloud and Pantheon the db credentials…

settings.php

<?php
/**
 * Example settings.php which supports per environment configs on different hosting platforms.
 */

$include = '';
// Pantheon
if (isset($_SERVER['PANTHEON_ENVIRONMENT'])) {
  $include = __DIR__ . "/config/settings.{$_SERVER['PANTHEON_ENVIRONMENT']}.php";
}
// Acquia
elseif (isset($_ENV['AH_SITE_ENVIRONMENT'])) {
  $include = __DIR__ . "/config/settings.{$_ENV['AH_SITE_ENVIRONMENT']}.php";
}
// Local dev
else {
  // local extends dev but is excluded from the repo via .gitignore
  $include = __DIR__ . '/config/settings.local.php';
}

// Check the file exists as it might not have been created yet.
if (file_exists($include)) {
  require_once $include;
}

Thanks for sharing. Would you mind also sharing some examples of what kind of settings you are changing per environment?

@agold2 error_level, site_name and environment_indicator_text are 3 right off the top of my head. DB credentials are another.