Recently, the Alibaba Cloud Container Image Service ACR developer evaluation activity is in full swing. Alibaba Cloud Container Registry ACR (Alibaba Cloud Container Registry) is an OCI-compliant security hosting and efficient distribution platform for cloud-native products such as container images and Helm Charts. The product is divided into a personal version and an enterprise version. The personal version is free for container developers to use with a limited amount.
In order to help more developers understand the functions, usage, and product experience of the container image service ACR, Alibaba Cloud Container Image ACR recruits a product evaluation team for developers and publishes original evaluation content about ACR. Only one week after the official launch of the event, dozens of developers have released their experience of using ACR.
From the perspective of developers, what are the differences between Alibaba Cloud ACR and other image repositories? We have intercepted the views shared by several developers. Do you feel the same as yours?
"Compared to other mirror repositories, ACR provides powerful Devops build capabilities"
Tester ID: Utopia Embers
The use of containers is inseparable from images. The container technology represented by Docker can package the application into a standard format image, and the application will be enabled to run again in the form of a container.
In a real production environment, you will need a large number of images, third-party or self-built; a large number of images are accompanied by management and control tasks such as saving, distribution and use.
Alibaba Cloud Container Image Service provides a secure image hosting capability without the time and labor cost of building and maintaining your own images. It facilitates the full life cycle management of images, and provides a stable technical foundation for the wave of container changes.
The features of the ACR mirror repository mainly include:
- Global deployment : more than 20 regions, the download limit within the region is free
- Efficient image construction : automatic code construction, support for multi-stage construction
- DevOps support : rich trigger rules, seamless application deployment
- Security compliance : support security scanning, Alibaba Cloud authentication and cloud market sales
I have used many mirror repositories. From a detailed comparison in many aspects, most of the functions of the mainstream Harbor and Quay overlap. Harbor's multi-warehouse management and mirror synchronization functions have always been the highlights of Harbor and have great practical value. As for the ability of SCM integration that Quay has but Harbor does not have, it does not form much advantage for Quay. Because the vast majority of enterprises already have basic CI, and the build capabilities provided by Quay are too simple to replace existing CI.
Quay has no obvious advantages over Harbor, but it has two inevitable disadvantages as a new open source project: user accumulation and open source community. Harbor has accumulated a wide range of users, and all aspects have been fully tested. With the endorsement of CNCF, its user group will further expand rapidly. In this case, it is very difficult for Quay to grab users from Harbor. Although the core contributor of Harbor is still VMWare, after so many years of accumulation, a relatively complete community has been formed, which is also crucial to the rapid development of an open source project. Therefore, Quay's open source can not shake Harbor's status.
Alibaba Cloud ACR supports Chinese language and Alibaba Cloud cloud-native ecological architecture , which is also a great advantage for the majority of Chinese users. Compared with other image repositories, ACR provides powerful Devops construction capabilities , and we can easily build continuous deployment and pipeline applications based on Alibaba Cloud's cloud-native ecological architecture. In terms of continuous integration/delivery/deployment systems, Alibaba Cloud ACR has made more comprehensive optimizations in terms of whether these systems have smooth access to the currently selected warehouse, and whether it is easy to expand in the future.
A more obvious and important advantage is that using Alibaba Cloud ACR can avoid annoying delays and unresponsiveness issues.
Original review: https://developer.aliyun.com/note/253950024
"Impressed with ACR's security features, which helped us avoid a considerable loss of business in time"
Evaluator ID: The program is not round
ACR's multi-point access speed is much better than that of unstable overseas services, and in terms of security, it is a strong guarantee of Cloud Knights , which prevents hackers from stealing container products. In actual use, the functions including multi-engine security scanning, vulnerability repair, operation audit and network access control provide us with secure security management services and help us solve the risk of leakage in a timely manner. Very satisfied.
Before using Alibaba Cloud ACR, after we installed Docker, the default remote image repository accessed was DockerHub, which was also the first container image repository service we contacted. Due to network security reasons, accessing Docker Hub in China is unbearable speed (mainly reflected in docker push/pull operations), and the creation of its warehouse is very limited, so we choose Alibaba Cloud ACR container image service. Compared with Docker Hub, Alibaba Cloud ACR provides full-featured cloud-native services for product management, product construction, product security, product distribution, and product delivery to instance management . We can not only enjoy efficient and stable services, but also cleverly combine the Alibaba Cloud ecosystem to achieve high coupling and rapid migration operations. Choose Alibaba Cloud ACR for faster and better savings.
Original review:
"The combination of ACR and Github makes it faster and more convenient for developers to pull foreign mirrors"
Tester ID: Asleep and dream
Alibaba Cloud's container image service ACR is very good. I often need to pull foreign images but cannot pull them. With the container image service, I can build a personal image repository on Alibaba Cloud and combine it with GitHub. In this way, I am very It is easy to pull in the mirror image abroad, which is really convenient for me .
Points that make me feel great:
- You can choose public or private according to the namespace, and the security is still very good.
- Especially the speed of the image, with the image acceleration service, the speed is very good, don't worry about the speed.
- There is also a collection function, for the more favorite mirror collection.
I have already started preparing to practice the Enterprise Edition, and I hope the price can be lowered a little :)
Original review:
"Compared with self-built warehouses, ACR EE is a better choice for enterprises to reduce costs and increase efficiency"
Reviewer ID: zhangpflyme
For cloud service users, the purpose of using cloud services is to solve problems. For personal development, they may consider more debugging requirements, as many functions as possible, and low costs. For enterprise users, the requirements are even more, such as safety, efficiency, and comprehensive functions.
Image repository services are essential for individuals and businesses that want to use containers for development. If it is local debugging, or for small and medium-sized enterprises, the self-built harbor may fully meet its own needs. Harbor itself is also very rich in functions. It is an open source project with many users and rich documentation. However, when enterprises have more and more requirements for mirror warehouse services and have higher requirements, the mirror warehouse services provided by major cloud vendors are now an important consideration.
Alibaba Cloud Container Image Service (ACR for short) is a safe hosting and efficient distribution platform for OCI-compliant cloud-native products such as container images and Helm Charts. ACR supports global synchronization acceleration, large-scale/large image distribution acceleration, multi-code source construction acceleration and other full-link efficiency improvements, and seamlessly integrates with container service ACK to help enterprises reduce delivery complexity and create a one-stop solution for cloud-native applications .
Recently, I tried Alibaba Cloud's ACR EE service and compared the self-built harbor and the ACR EE service. There are indeed many improvements. (The specific content will be detailed in a single article later, so stay tuned)
There are also a few functions that I find more useful, which are briefly described below:
- Image construction : In general, if you build a self-built harbor and want to automatically build an image, you need to configure jenkins triggers to trigger construction, packaging, uploading, and scanning through the pipeline. And the ACR EE service has done all these, we can configure it well, which simplifies the configuration and improves the efficiency, which is really convenient.
- Image acceleration and subscription to overseas images : Most of the public images are in the official Docker warehouse, and the official Docker server is overseas, which is not efficient . The image acceleration function provided by Alibaba Cloud is really good, and the loading speed is faster. For overseas source mirror repositories such as GCR and Quay, due to some network restrictions, it is generally impossible to pull and synchronize from China. This "subscribing to overseas mirrors" function is more practical.
Some other functions similar or identical to harbor will not be introduced.
In fact, all the problems come down to one question: the functions of harbor are very comprehensive, and they are still open source and free of charge. Why should I pay for ACR EE services from cloud vendors or Alibaba Cloud? My answer is: ACR EE service, more full-featured, higher performance, and easier to maintain.
The open source version of harbor can still meet the basic requirements in the initial stage, but with the continuous growth of the enterprise, the harbor can no longer meet the higher requirements of the enterprise. If the harbor is stacked up, it is more troublesome to maintain, and the technical strength of operation and maintenance is not enough for secondary development. Considering the network efficiency, bandwidth, security, high availability, etc., the operation and maintenance force cannot support so many demands. In order to reduce costs and increase efficiency, it is better to use the cloud service ACR EE.
The various services provided by cloud manufacturers are to facilitate enterprises to solve various problems. Since you can spend money to do things well, why not do it? The truth is that simple and unpretentious.
Original review:
ACR developer evaluation team is actively recruiting
Before September 30, 2022, open and experience Alibaba Cloud Container Mirroring Service ACR for free, and publish original evaluation content, you will have the opportunity to receive multiple customized gifts such as mechanical keyboards, customized umbrellas, and mobile recharge cards! Hurry up and call your friends to join us!
Scan the QR code of the picture or click "here" below, you can go directly to the ACR developer evaluation event site, hurry up and register!
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