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 globally in seconds. All requests route to the nearest point of presence (POP), minimizing access latency.

• Enterprise security, compliance, and O&M: Integrates with ESA secure acceleration to provide WAF, anti-DDoS, and bot management for your Pages sites. Supports phased releases and includes monitoring and logging.

• Edge function capabilities: Provides low-latency edge functions based on V8 Isolate with automatic scaling. No server management required.

• Developer-friendly experience: Operate from the web console, CLI, or RESTful APIs for 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 JavaScript runtime environment on Alibaba Cloud edge nodes that executes your uploaded code. A function has two parts: configuration (name and description) and code (the script you upload).

• Pages: A frontend development and deployment platform built on ESA infrastructure for building and publishing static sites and serverless applications. Pages integrates with functions to distribute dynamic and static resources from the edge, reducing latency for global users.

• Version: A snapshot of your code at a specific point. Each version gets a system-generated version number. When you publish a function or Pages project, you select which version to deploy. You can roll back to previous versions at any time. The platform supports percentage-based phased releases — you can publish two versions simultaneously and customize the traffic ratio. For example, route 10% of traffic to Version 1 and 90% to Version 2 for controlled rollouts.

  

• Environment: Functions provide a staging environment and a production environment:

  

  • Staging environment: An isolated POP that simulates production for testing. Changes in staging do not affect production. To access it, add the staging IP address to your hosts file.

  • Production environment: The online environment, consisting of globally distributed POPs. After testing in staging, publish your code to production. The preceding figure is for illustration only. POPs scale automatically based on request volume, and regional distribution may vary.

• Domain Name: A domain name triggers a function. Two methods are supported: Custom Domains and Routes. Bind a domain to forward all traffic to a function, or use routing to forward specific traffic. Configure a domain name.

Limitations