SAE application deployment and hosting - Serverless App Engine

Serverless App Engine (SAE) abstracts the concept of an application, allowing you to deploy and host applications from code packages and images. With SAE, you can easily adopt container technology without managing clusters or servers. You can focus on designing and building your applications while SAE handles the complete application lifecycle, maximizes resource utilization, and provides monitoring and Operations and Maintenance (O&M) services. This topic describes the application types, deployment methods, and hosting features that SAE supports.

Application deployment methods

The following table describes the applications and deployment methods that SAE supports.

Application	Deployment method	References
Native Spring Cloud application	WAR, JAR, and image	Modify service registration and discovery of applications to Nacos
Native Dubbo application	WAR, JAR, and image	Host Dubbo applications to SAE
HSF	WAR, JAR, and image	Host an HSF application to SAE
Applications in programming languages other than Java, PHP, and Python	Image	Deploy applications in other languages by using images in the SAE console
PHP application	Image and ZIP	Deploy a PHP application by using an image in the SAE console Deploy a PHP application by using a ZIP package in the SAE console
Python application	Image and ZIP	Use an image to deploy a Python application in the SAE console Deploy a Python application by using a ZIP package in the SAE console

From a service framework perspective, you can deploy applications developed with the Spring Cloud, Dubbo, and HSF frameworks to SAE. However, their application runtime environments vary based on the deployment method.
- When you deploy a Spring Cloud or Dubbo application using a WAR package, select an apache-tomcat version as the runtime environment.
- When you deploy a Spring Cloud or Dubbo application using a JAR package, select the Standard Java Application Runtime Environment.
- When you deploy an HSF application using a WAR or JAR package, select an EDAS-Container version as the runtime environment.
From a technology stack perspective, SAE supports hosting applications written in various languages, such as Java, PHP, Python, Node.js, and Go.
In addition to deploying from the console or using APIs, SAE also integrates with various continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) tools and plug-ins. Supported CI/CD tools include Jenkins, Terraform, and . Supported plug-ins include Maven, IntelliJ IDEA, and Eclipse. These integrations enable automatic deployment after you submit code.

Important

If this is your first time deploying an application to SAE, create an application in the SAE console and push your business code to it.

Advanced settings for application deployment

Advanced settings for an application include Set startup commands, Set environment variables, Set Hosts binding, Configure health checks, Log collection service, and Persistent storage. You can configure these settings when you create an application or afterward. If you configure advanced settings after the application is created, the application must be restarted for the settings to take effect. To prevent business interruptions or other unpredictable errors, we recommend that you configure advanced settings during off-peak hours.

Application hosting features

After you host an application in SAE, you can manage the application's complete lifecycle from the console. This simplifies O&M.

Scenarios	Features
Resource management	Use namespaces to logically isolate applications and use configuration items to store required application configuration. For more information, see Manage a namespace.
Application deployment	Application creation and deployment: After you develop an application, create and deploy it in SAE and configure advanced settings as needed. For more information, see Deploy applications. Plug-in-based deployment: SAE supports deployment using Maven, IntelliJ IDEA, and Eclipse plug-ins. For more information, see Plug-in deployment. CI/CD: Continuous integration (CI) and continuous deployment (CD) are required during application iteration and upgrade. SAE supports CI/CD deployment using tools such as Jenkins, and Terraform. For more information, see CI/CD and Terraform overview. Upgrade and rollback: After an application is created, it requires continuous iteration and upgrades. If an upgraded version has issues, you must roll back to a previous version. For more information, see Upgrade and roll back an application.
Application settings	After you deploy an application to SAE, you can change the instance type and switch the security group and vSwitch as needed.
Application access	After you deploy an application to SAE, its services often need to access Internet resources or other VPCs. You can achieve this by attaching a CLB instance, configuring a NAT Gateway and an EIP, or attaching an EIP to an application instance. For more information, see Application access and traffic management.
Application O&M	SAE supports basic O&M tasks through Webshell. For example, you can upload and download logs to diagnose applications. If an instance fails to start, you can use the one-click debugging feature in SAE to locate the issue. For more information, see Application O&M.
One-click start and stop	SAE supports one-click start and stop for applications in development, testing, and pre-release environments within the same namespace. For more information, see Perform batch operations on applications.
Elastic scaling	You can scale an application by changing the number of instances to increase or decrease its compute capacity. When the instance load is high, manually add new application instances. When the application is idle, reduce the number of instances to efficiently use resources and reduce costs. Auto scaling: When scaling is not urgent, such as for periodic traffic peaks, use auto scaling. For more information, see Configure an Auto Scaling policy. Manual scaling: When scaling is urgent, such as for sudden traffic bursts, use manual scaling. For more information, see Manually scale instances.
Log management	During application O&M, you can use logs to locate and diagnose issues. For more information, see Log management.
Monitoring and alerting	SAE integrates with Application Real-Time Monitoring Service (ARMS) to provide monitoring and alerting capabilities for key metrics of applications deployed in SAE. For more information, see Application monitoring and Alert management.
Distributed configuration management	SAE supports centralized management of application configurations. You can extract many parameters and variables generated during application development into configuration files and upload them to SAE. For more information, see Configuration management.