Introduction to current function of the cloud-effect family bucket is relatively suitable for individual development or small and medium-sized teams. If you are choosing to build this type of management platform at this time, and the budget and manpower are stretched, then you might as well try Yunxiao this product! It's cool to be a prostitute together! Especially the little friends who have server resources in Alibaba Cloud, really can't miss it!
Author|Zhai Yongchao
During the weekend, I received several SMS notification messages that several cloud servers were about to expire, and I was planning to renew the fee, which was thousands of dollars! Because these few were bought at low prices in the past, if you renew the fees, you will have to eat away a lot of profits!
As an independent developer who supports himself, cost saving is a necessary skill. Otherwise, how can he make a considerable profit? Therefore, I began to ponder to make some structural adjustments to see if we can continue to run the business that is still running at low cost while the server resources are reduced this time.
Because the business product is the most important, so this piece can't be moved. Then the active ones are some peripheral facilities, such as tools for task management, document management or continuous delivery. After investigating many SaaS products and cloud services, I finally chose Alibaba Cloud's cloud effect family bucket. Why did you choose Yunxiao Family Bucket in the end? The core reason is still the three words "family bucket", basically whether I can cover the R&D management functions I want. So what can this family bucket specifically do? Let me share with you the structure of the platform before and after the transformation to give you an intuitive understanding.
Old architecture: bulk integration
The establishment of the old architecture basically draws on the commonly used open source products and commercial products used in the company to build the basic platform in the past. According to the function, there are mainly the following:
- Code repository: GitLab
- Continuous Integration: Jenkins
- Task management: JIRA
- Document management: Confluence
Both Gitlab and Jenkins are open source products, free and widely used, and are included in most companies' bulk solutions. Although JIRA and Confluence are commercial products, the certification of the primary version only costs 9.9 US dollars, which is very friendly to individuals and small teams of less than 10 people. Due to the powerful process configuration function of JIRA, they can be used as the portal of the entire R&D management platform.
Supplement: Many developers only think of JIRA as a task management tool and don't know much about JIRA's workflow functions. Here is a brief explanation. The reason why JIRA is powerful is that it benefits from its powerful workflow configuration function. Since GitLab, Jenkins and other tools are supported by plug-ins under the WebHook or JIRA market, we can easily connect the steps of using these tools. In this way, the integration process of business requirements, task disassembly, code version, construction and deployment in the software development process can all be completed in a single entrance like JIRA.
Resources used: Because the configurations of the servers that were snapped up before are not high, most of them are 1C2G and 2C4G. All were deployed separately for stable operation, and a total of 4 ECSs were consumed.
Program advantages:
- Low learning costs: These products are very common among Internet companies, and most of the developments are not too unfamiliar. At the same time, the ecology of these softwares is very sound, and there is a rich plug-in market to meet the various needs of users.
- Low product cost: The products used here are either free or very cheap, so the basic cost of the cost is not high
Disadvantages of the scheme:
- High deployment cost: Because there are many software products that need to be installed, the deployment cost is high
New architecture: cloud-effect family bucket
After deciding to use the cloud-effect family bucket, the next thing to do is to find alternative solutions for each product used in the old architecture. Let's follow the steps of my research and use to see the corresponding relationship of each product!
Code warehouse
The code warehouse in the cloud effect solution is a product named cloud effect Codeup , the product address: https://codeup.aliyun.com/ . If you are like me, it is very simple to do warehouse migration. As shown in the figure below, Codeup provides a dedicated import method for various commonly used platforms. Small partners who are not particularly familiar with Git management can also easily complete the migration of the code warehouse according to the prompts.
After clicking "Import Code Library", we can see the interface below. Basically, some commonly used Git management platforms have been supported. Select the source platform you want to migrate, and then find the authentication method that the corresponding platform needs to obtain according to the official website document Just do the configuration.
After completing the configuration of the authentication information, Codeup will obtain all the project warehouses from the corresponding platform. Then you only need to select the warehouses you want to import one by one and click the "Import" button to easily complete the code migration.
This is relatively simple, basically all Git management platforms can support similar migration operations. It's not a special highlight. In terms of code management, the main contribution is to save an ECS for this transformation plan.
Continuous integration
After completing the code migration, the continuous integration part will be opened. The corresponding product is Cloud Effect Flow , and the product address is: https://flow.aliyun.com/ .
The pipeline for creating CI/CD in Cloud Effect Flow is very simple, because it provides configuration templates for a variety of continuous integration cases in various mainstream development languages.
Here I tried to configure a Spring Boot back-end application to deploy to ECS, just select the first recommended template in the figure above. The pipeline configuration interface as shown in the figure below will appear, click each step to perform detailed configuration
Click each step to perform detailed configuration, such as: how to build with maven commands, how to upload products
In the deployment operation, because of the combination with Alibaba Cloud, you can easily associate to the resources under the account to select deployment, so you don't need to maintain the server list yourself, which is especially convenient!
So can this pipeline function meet the characteristics of cloud-native applications that can be deployed in multiple locations at once? I also tried to do it below. The general process is: in the test environment, build, upload products, and deploy; in the pre environment, select products and deploy; in the pro environment, perform site selection and deployment. I simulated this more common CI/CD management process.
As shown in the figure above, it can be satisfied. This has also met my continuous integration requirements. But here in the pipeline series, I want to realize the step of selecting products, and the supported user experience is not particularly good. It took me some configuration and consulting time to complete. It is reported that this part of the experience optimization will be optimized soon in the September 15th version! Iteration is very fast, very awesome!
It is worth mentioning here that the various operation templates provided in the Cloud Effect Flow are very suitable for our domestic users. For example, you can look at the details of my process in the test environment. Code scanning is added here, which covers it. The inspection report of the Alibaba code protocol, etc.
The notification reminder is also in line with the management characteristics of domestic development teams, and provides support for commonly used domestic software such as Dingding, Enterprise WeChat, and Feishu.
Well, through the cloud effect Flow, I saved another Jenkins ECS.
Management portal
When talking about the old architecture, I mentioned that the important reason for using JIRA is to use it as a portal for the entire R&D management, because it can integrate all other peripheral facilities. For example: task management, continuous integration triggering, etc. So in the cloud effect family bucket, is there any product that plays such a role? As a one-stop solution, it must be arranged. The corresponding product is cloud effect DevOps , product address: https://devops.aliyun.com/ .
At this point, you may have to ask, shouldn’t task management and document management be replaced? Must be replaced! However, because DevOps as a portal cloud effect actually covers these two areas. So, let's take a look at the powerful features of cloud-effect DevOps!
This product is very quick to get started because it provides some common templates. I will directly give DevOps R&D templates to create.
After completing the creation, it is not difficult to find that the requirements, iterations, tasks, defects, test plans, and version management in the menu are not substitutes for JIRA? And the knowledge base is not a substitute for Confluence!
It also provides the Excel import function very intimately, so I only need to export Issue from JIRA, then import it here, and then I can continue to do the task management before!
At the same time, as a management portal, it can naturally be linked to the previously introduced Cloud Effect Codeup and Cloud Effect Flow. Just click on the code and pipeline in the menu (when you just created it, you need to click on the association to select the code warehouse and pipeline configured under the same account), you can view and implement daily operations!
At this point, cloud-effect DevOps has basically completed the roles of JIRA and Confluence in the bulk solution, and properly continued to release two ECSs!
Summarize
Finally, after taking stock of the bulk solution that I made this time to using the cloud-effect family bucket, I think there are a few big benefits:
- Cost reduction: 4 ECSs were saved. For personal development or small teams like us, cloud effects are basically free. Can a prostitute be uncomfortable?
- Easy operation and maintenance: Highly integrated with Alibaba Cloud, it is more convenient for resource maintenance and associated operations!
For the cloud-effect DevOps product, it is very easy to use from my scenario, the core reason is that it is enough. But if you want to do very complex management, there may be some difficulties. For example, in the current version, I did not find a strong workflow support like JIRA. In this case, if the team has some complex process management, such as multi-person review The process, as well as the linkage with other systems, has not yet been well supported (however, when I consulted with a small cloud effect partner about this kind of function, I learned that this kind of function has been internally tested, so what is the specific function support? Let's wait and see together after the public beta).
As far as the current function of the entire cloud effect family bucket is concerned, I think the most important applicable group is my personal development or small and medium-sized teams! If you are currently making selections for building this type of management platform, and at the same time, just like me, the budget and manpower are stretched, then you might as well try the cloud effect product! It's cool to be a prostitute together! Especially the little friends who have server resources in Alibaba Cloud, really can't miss it!
If you do not have a practical project to experience cloud-effect DevOps, but you also want to learn and understand this R&D management product. Then you can also experience it by participating in the "1 minute code automatic bug catching" activity below.
Click the link below to experience the cloud-effect DevOps family bucket immediately!
https://www.aliyun.com/product/yunxiao?channel=yy\_dd
Thanks to Zhai Yongchao for his trust and affirmation of Yunxiao, and hope that Yunxiao can accompany them to make continuous progress.
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