Application Management groups related Alibaba Cloud resources into logical units so you can monitor, secure, and operate them together instead of managing each Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance, database, or load balancer individually. It combines resource management, security monitoring, event tracking, O&M automation, and deployment pipelines in a single console and supports applications deployed on ECS instances, Docker containers, and Alibaba Cloud Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) clusters.
Key concepts
| Concept | Description |
|---|---|
| Resource group (project) | The smallest unit for permission control and financial management. Use resource groups to organize resources in your Alibaba Cloud account. For more information, see Terms. |
| Application | The smallest unit within a resource group and the smallest unit for resource management. |
| Application group | A deployment environment within an application. Multiple application groups in the same application can span different regions, use different configurations, and connect to different Server Load Balancer (SLB) instances. |
Application group association rules
ECS instances in an application group can be associated with ApsaraDB RDS and SLB instances in different ways depending on the environment:
Staging and production environments: ECS instances in an application group share the same RDS instance but connect to different SLB instances.
Canary release and production environments: ECS instances in an application group share the same RDS instance and the same SLB instance.
Cross-region deployments: ECS instances in application groups deployed in different regions cannot share the same RDS or SLB instance.
Benefits
| Benefit | Description |
|---|---|
| Resource visibility | View all resources across an application from a single dashboard, including billing, security risks, and monitoring data. |
| Group-based O&M | Run commands, download files, and automate tasks across all resources in an application group using CloudOps Orchestration Service (OOS). |
| Role-based access control | Assign system administrator, application manager, and application user roles with granular permissions. |
| Security monitoring | Detect configuration risks, vulnerabilities, and baseline issues without switching between consoles. |
| Cost tracking | Analyze costs per application group to understand spending and optimize resource usage. |
| CI/CD integration | Deploy applications through Apsara DevOps pipeline integration, from code compilation to production deployment. |
User roles
Application Management supports three roles with different permission levels.
| Role | Permissions |
|---|---|
| System administrator | Manage the basic information, tags, and resource groups of applications. |
| Application manager | Create resources, allocate application users, modify application configurations and resources, perform O&M on resources, and approve applications. |
| Application user | Perform nondestructive operations: monitor applications, view logs, check status, and troubleshoot issues. Cannot create or delete resources or modify core configurations. |
Create and manage an application
Prerequisites
Before you begin, make sure that you have:
An Alibaba Cloud account with appropriate permissions
(Optional) Existing resources such as virtual private clouds (VPCs), vSwitches, and ECS instances to import
Workflow
The following diagram shows the overall workflow.
| Step | Description |
|---|---|
| Create an application | Configure the application manager, application contact (notification recipient), and application users. Create applications for different resources and configure application groups based on user roles. After you select a region, import existing resources or create new ECS resources. See Step 3 below. |
| Monitor and manage resources by group | On the My Applications page, view the applications you have access to. On the application details page, view resource information, security risks, monitoring data, alerts, and events. Use Apsara DevOps or OOS to perform O&M operations. See Step 5 below. |
| (Optional) Modify or delete an application | Add application groups or delete applications that are no longer needed. Tags and resource groups cannot be changed after creation. If an application no longer meets your needs, create a new one. See Step 6 below. |
Procedure
Go to the ECS console - Application Management page.
Create an application and group existing resources. For detailed instructions, see Create an application group to manage resources.
On the My Applications page, find the target application and click its name to open the details page.
On the application details page, monitor and manage resources by group.
Tab Description Overview View the billing details of application groups. For more information, see View the cost analysis of an application group. Resources Import resources such as ECS instances and manage them. For example, remove instances, connect to instances, run commands, and change instance configurations. For more information, see Create an application group to manage resources. O&M Use OOS to perform automated O&M operations on resources in application groups. For example, send remote commands, download files, and create custom tasks. For more information, see Perform automated O&M on resources in application groups. Security Risks View cloud platform configuration check results and security information about resources, including pending alerts, pending vulnerabilities, and baseline issues. Monitoring and Alerting Configure alert rules for resources. For more information, see Configure resource monitoring and alerting rules. Events View triggered system events. If you subscribe to system event notifications, view instance migration events triggered by underlying upgrades, scheduled O&M events, unexpected O&M events, instance billing events, and instance security events. For more information, see Overview of ECS system events and Subscribe to ECS system event notifications. Publications Use Apsara DevOps pipeline integration for code compilation, building, and application deployment. For more information, see Create an Apsara DevOps pipeline to deploy applications. Cost Analysis View cost analysis for each application group, consumption details for ECS instances, and average usage for ECS instances, elastic IP addresses, and SLB instances. To view costs, go to the Cost Analysis page. (Optional) Modify or delete applications based on your business requirements.
Modify an application
To add a new application group to an application:
On the My Applications page, find the target application and click Modify in the Actions column.
In the Modify Application dialog box, enter a group name for the new application group.
Click OK.
The application name cannot be changed after creation. Tags and resource groups are also not configurable through this dialog. If an application no longer meets your needs, create a new one.
Delete an application
To delete an application you no longer need:
On the application details page, choose More > Delete Application.
In the dialog box, review the application name and configure the deletion options:
Delete All Application Groups: Selected by default. Deletes all application groups within the application.
Delete Resources Created for Application (Not Resources Imported for Application): Selected by default. Releases resources that were created specifically for the application, such as ECS instances, cloud disks, security group rules, and SLB instances. Resources that were imported into the application are disassociated but not deleted.
Click OK.
You can also delete an application from the My Applications tab by clicking Delete in the Actions column.
The deletion tasks are executed asynchronously. After all application groups in the application are deleted, the application is automatically deleted. Back up important data and configurations before deleting an application. After deletion, the associated data and configurations cannot be restored.
References
| Method | Description |
|---|---|
| Resource groups | Group cloud resources by usage, permissions, and ownership. For more information, see What is Resource Group? or Resource groups. |
| Tags | If your account has multiple ECS resource types that are associated with each other, add tags to facilitate classification and fine-grained management. For more information, see Tags. |