Elastic Compute Service (ECS) application management integrates features such as resource management, security, monitoring, event management, O&M, and publishing. You can use ECS application management to perform O&M and manage Alibaba Cloud resources in a centralized manner. This topic describes how to use ECS application management.

Introduction

ECS application management allows you to manage applications that are deployed in ECS and Docker environments. These applications support Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) clusters. The following figure shows the relationships between the components related to ECS application management. The following table describes the components.

Relationships between components
Component Description
Resource group (project) A resource group is the smallest control unit for permission and financial management. You can use resource groups to sort resources in your Alibaba Cloud account. For more information, see Resource Group or Terms.
Application An application is the smallest unit of a resource group and the smallest control unit for resource management.
Application group An application group is an environment that is deployed under an application. Multiple application groups under an application can be deployed in different regions, have different configurations, and be associated with different Server Load Balancer (SLB) instances. ECS instances in an application group may be associated with different ApsaraDB RDS instances or SLB instances based on business environments or business scenarios. Examples:
  • In the staging or online environment, ECS instances within an application group are associated with the same RDS instance but different SLB instances.
  • In the canary release or online environment, ECS instances within an application group are associated with the same RDS instance and SLB instance.
  • ECS instances within application groups that are deployed in different regions cannot be associated with the same RDS or SLB instance.

A resource group (project) can contain multiple applications. Each application can consist of multiple application groups.

Scenarios and procedures

Scenarios

Assume that you use a variety of cloud services, such as ECS, RDS, and SLB and you have multiple resources of each cloud service, such as instances, Elastic Block Storage (EBS), disks, and snapshots in ECS. The resources are used by multiple business users that are granted based on their requirements such as resource grouping, permission management, and cost allocation. The following table describes business users (roles) by category.

Role Description
System administrator System administrators have the permissions to manage the basic information, tags and resource groups of applications.
Application manager Application managers have the permissions to create resources, allocate application users, modify application configurations and resources in applications, implement resource O&M, and approve applications.
Application user Application users can only view resources and perform O&M.

Procedure

The following figure shows a simple procedure to use ECS application management. The following table describes the procedure in details.

Procedure
Procedure Description
Create an application You can configure the application manager, application contact (recipient of notifications), and application users in advance. You can create applications for different resources and configure application groups based on different permissions of business users (roles). For example, after you select a region, you can import existing resources or create ECS resources based on scenarios. For more information, see Step 3.
Monitor and manage resources by group Application users and application managers can go to the Application Management page to view the list of applications on which they have permissions. On the application details page, they can view the information of resources, security risks, monitoring and alerting, and events. They can use Apsara DevOps or Operation Orchestration Service (OOS) to perform O&M. For more information, see Step 5.
(Optional) Modify and delete an application You can modify information such as the description of an ECS application. The tags and resource groups corresponding to the application cannot be modified. If the current application does meet your business requirements, you must create new applications. For more information, see Step 6.

Procedure

  1. Log on to the ECS console.
  2. In the left-side navigation pane, click Applications.
  3. Create an ECS application and manage existing resources by group.
  4. On the Application Management page, find the application that you want to manage and click the application name to go to the details page of the application.
  5. On the application details page, monitor and manage resources in the application by group.
    The following table describes the tabs of the application details page.
    Tab Description
    Overview You can view the billing details of the application group.
    Resources You can import resources such as ECS instances and manage the imported resources. For example, you can remove instances, connect to instances, run commands on instances, and change instance configurations. For more information, see Create an application group to manage resources.
    Security Risks You can view the check results of cloud platform configurations and the security information of resources. For example, you can view the pending alerts, pending vulnerabilities, and baseline issues.
    Monitoring and Alerting You can configure alert rules for resources. For more information, see Configure resource monitoring and alerting rules.
    Events You can view the dynamics of triggered system events. If you subscribe to system event notifications, you can view the dynamics of triggered scheduled O&M events, unexpected O&M events, instance billing events, instance security events, or instance migration events due to upgrades at underlying layer. For more information, see Overview and Configure event notifications.
    O&M You can perform O&M on resources in application groups and use OOS to perform automated O&M, send remote commands, download files, and create tasks. For more information, see Perform automated O&M on resources in application groups.
    Publications You can use Apsara DevOps Flow to complete the process from code compilation to application deployment with several simple steps.
  6. On the application details page, you can modify or delete applications based on your business needs.
    • You can modify the description of an application. Click EditApplication. In the EditApplication dialog box, modify the application description and click OK.
    • If an application is no longer needed, you can delete it. Click Delete Application. In the message that appears, click Delete.

      After the application is deleted, resources imported to the application are disassociated and resources such as alert rules and event notifications created based on the specified scenario are released. You cannot view the monitoring data of the resources by using this application group or receive alert notifications about the resources. Proceed with caution.

      Note Alternatively, you can find the application that you want to delete on the Application Management page and click Delete in the Actions column.