Edge Security Acceleration:Functions and Pages

Core capabilities

• Automated build and deployment: Functions and Pages natively supports GitHub and automatically detects code changes in the main branch to trigger builds and deployments.

• Global edge distribution: Deploy Functions and Pages globally in seconds. All requests are routed to the nearest points of presence (POP) on a distributed network. This ensures that end users experience the lowest possible access latency.

• Enterprise security, compliance, and Operations and Maintenance (O&M): Functions and Pages seamlessly integrates with ESA secure acceleration. This integration provides your Pages sites with security features such as Web Application Firewall (WAF), anti-DDoS, and bot management. The platform also supports phased releases for the production environment and includes a comprehensive monitoring and logging system. These features help ensure the stability of your services in the production environment.

• Edge function capabilities: Functions and Pages provides low-latency edge function services based on V8 Isolate. This service supports automatic scaling, so you do not need to manage underlying infrastructure such as servers.

• Developer-friendly experience: You can perform operations from multiple clients. The platform provides a web console, a command line interface (CLI), and RESTful APIs to support automated integration.

How it works

• Check request type: When a client request arrives at an ESA POP, the POP identifies the request type. Requests for Functions and Pages are then routed to a dedicated module for optimized processing.

• Process request content: The function module processes dynamic content. Static content is retrieved from the cache module or fetched from the origin server.

Terms

• Function: A function is a JavaScript runtime environment that Alibaba Cloud provides on its edge to execute your uploaded JavaScript code. A function consists of two parts: its configuration, which includes the function name and description, and its code, which is the script that you upload.

• Pages: Pages is an integrated frontend development and deployment platform built on the ESA infrastructure. It is designed for modern web development scenarios and allows developers to efficiently build and publish static sites and serverless applications. The platform integrates with functions to enable coordinated distribution of dynamic and static resources and execute business logic close to the user. This integration significantly improves content delivery efficiency, enhances interactive response performance, and supports low-latency access for global users.

• Version: Functions and Pages supports version management. As you update your JS code, create a version by taking a snapshot of the code at a specific point. When you publish a function or a Pages project, select a version to publish. You can also roll back to previous versions and manage historical code. Each version has a version number that is automatically generated by the system. The platform also supports percentage-based phased releases. You can publish two versions of a function or Pages project at the same time and customize the traffic distribution ratio for each version. For example, configure Version 1 to receive 10% of the traffic and Version 2 to receive 90%. User requests are then routed to the corresponding versions based on the configured ratio. This feature enables fine-grained testing and controlled, progressive releases.

  

• Environment: Functions provide a staging environment and a production environment to meet your development, testing, and deployment needs:

  

  • Staging environment: A staging environment is an independent POP used to test code. The staging environment simulates the production environment but is isolated from it. Modifications to the function configuration or code in the staging environment do not affect the production environment. To access the staging environment, you must add the provided staging IP address to your hosts file.

  • Production environment: The production environment, also known as the online environment, consists of many POPs distributed worldwide. After you test your code in the staging environment, you can publish it to the production environment. The preceding figure is for illustration only. Functions automatically adds or removes POPs based on your request volume, and the actual regional distribution of POPs may vary.

• Domain Name: A domain name is used to call a function. Two trigger methods are supported: Custom Domains and Routes. Bind a domain name to forward all its traffic to a function. You can also use routing to forward a portion of a domain name's traffic to a function. For more information, see Configure a domain name.

Limitations