This topic describes the features of Compute Nest, including the basic and advanced features.
Basic features
Compute Nest provides comprehensive basic features for integrated delivery of software and resources. These features help service providers and developers enhance their service capabilities and reduce operational costs, and help their users improve deployment efficiency and minimize management expenses.
Feature set | Feature | Description | References |
Service publishing | Create private services | All resources and software required by a private service are deployed within the Alibaba Cloud account of the customer. | |
Create fully managed services | All resources and software required by a fully managed service are deployed within the Alibaba Cloud account of the service creator. | ||
Create hosted O&M services | Hosted O&M services in Compute Nest are classified into private services for which the hosted O&M feature is enabled and fully hosted O&M services. | ||
Create services by using Git | Compute Nest allows you to use Git to import repositories to Compute Nest to create services. This feature helps developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) significantly reduce the complexity of service creation and quickly create services. | ||
Test services | After you create and save a Compute Nest service as a service provider, you must test the service and submit the service for review after the service passes the test. | ||
Publish services | You must submit a service for review before you can publish and deliver the service to customers. | ||
Unpublish services |
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ROS template input | If you want to create a service in Compute Nest as a service provider, you can create a template in the Resource Orchestration Service (ROS) console, and then copy the template content to the Template Content code editor in the Compute Nest console or upload the template as a file to import the template. | ||
Parameter set | Service providers can configure some or all parameters in a service as a parameter set for customers. This simplifies the configurations and provides best-practice settings for users. | ||
Deployment package | A deployment package is a collective term for deployment carriers used during the deployment process, including ECS images, Helm charts, files, and container images. Using deployment packages enables more efficient application deployment. | ||
Upgrade | After a service provider publishes a new version of a service, the customers can upgrade the service instances of the service to the latest version to obtain new features or fix issues. | ||
Change configurations | When a customer creates a service instance, the customer is required to configure parameters or select a parameter set. Configuration change refers to modifying these parameters or changing the parameter set. | ||
Monitoring and alerts | Compute Nest provides a comprehensive system monitoring solution that consists of CloudMonitor-based resource monitoring and Prometheus-based application monitoring. | ||
Log management | Compute Nest provides comprehensive log management features at the service instance level. You can view application logs within service instances to facilitate fault diagnosis and monitoring. | ||
Parameter mapping | When you create a fully managed service in custom mode, you can configure parameter mappings for the parameters among which dependencies exist. You can specify the values to be used for the associated parameters that depend on a dependency parameter. This way, when a customer creates a service instance, Compute Nest automatically sets the associated parameters that depend on the dependency parameter to the predefined values based on the value of the dependency parameter. | ||
Private network interconnection | Compute Nest allows you to establish private connections by using virtual private cloud (VPC) peering or PrivateLink. | ||
User authorization | When you create a fully managed service, you can select a Resource Access Management (RAM) role and grant the required permissions to the PassRole action. This enables Compute Nest to assume the specified role to create related resources. | ||
Custom O&M items | Service providers can create custom O&M templates and operation manual pages based on their service characteristics, facilitating user maintenance of service instances. | ||
Trial services | Compute Nest provides free trials for private services for the service providers and their users. | ||
Use services | Create private service instances | You can create service instances of private services by using Compute Nest Service Catalog and Alibaba Cloud Marketplace. | |
Create fully managed service instances | You can create service instances of fully managed services by using Compute Nest Service Catalog and Alibaba Cloud Marketplace. | ||
Create trial service instances | You can create service instances of services that support trials to create service instances by using Compute Nest Service Catalog and Alibaba Cloud Marketplace. | ||
Create managed service instances | You can create managed service instances based on the deployment URL of the hosted O&M service provided by service providers. | ||
Monitoring and logs | You can view events, monitoring information, operation logs, and deployment logs of service instances in the Compute Nest console. | ||
Change service instance configurations | If service providers enable the configuration change feature and complete the settings of this feature when creating a service, you can perform configuration change operations on the service instance when the parameter values or parameter sets of the service instance do not meet your business requirements. | ||
Service operation management | After service instances are created, you can perform O&M operations on the created service instances in the Compute Nest console. For example, you can scale up or down a service instance, start multiple service instances at a time, and upload files to multiple ECS instances at a time. |
Advanced features
Compute Nest provides advanced features such as service sales, managed services, distribution, and delivery management. These features help service providers and distributors build software distribution networks and secure, convenient operation capabilities, delivering more efficient and convenient services to their users.
Feature set | Feature | Description | References |
Service sales | Alibaba Cloud Marketplace | After service providers publish services in the Compute Nest console, they can publish the services as products in Alibaba Cloud Marketplace, which allows customers to purchase them. Service providers can specify an appropriate sales mode for their services based on service features. | Overview of selling Compute Nest services in Alibaba Cloud Marketplace |
SaaS Boost | Compute Nest SaaS Boost is a development tool and framework of Alibaba Cloud, designed to help software as a service (SaaS) developers build, deploy, scale, and sell applications. Compute Nest SaaS Boost provides out-of-the-box features and components to facilitate business logic development. Compute Nest SaaS Boost simplifies the development of SaaS applications and reduces development costs. | ||
Custom sales | As a service provider, you can configure custom sales settings for a private service. This allows you to specify the validity period of the service instances that are created based on the private service. This also allows you to customize the data that can be accessed by applications or software for the private service instances. | ||
Managed O&M | Hosted O&M operations for ECS instances | If Workbench cannot meet O&M requirements (such as Windows requiring a graphical interface), service providers can connect to ECS instances by using Virtual Network Computing (VNC). | Access and perform O&M operations on an ECS instance by using VNC |
Manage hosted O&M service instances | Service providers can view all published service instances by using the hosted O&M feature. | ||
Distribution | Distribution authorization | Service providers can authorize distributors to distribute the published services. The distributors can directly distribute the services. | |
Delivery management | Publish O&M announcements | Service providers can publish O&M announcements, and Compute Nest automatically creates maintenance items for associated service instances. | |
Modify service deployment permissions | You can configure a customer whitelist to prevent unauthorized customers from accessing a service's deployment URL. You can also grant the required permissions to whitelisted customers. |