[01/2022] Alibaba Cloud DevOps Pipeline (Flow): Managed enterprise-grade DevOps Service

There are many DevOps tools and services available. Some popular services include Azure DevOps, Jenkins, Travis CI, GitHub Actions, etc. In addition, Alibaba Cloud recently launched managed DevOps service - Alibaba Cloud DevOps Pipelines - Flow.

I used multiple CICD tools throughout my career, including self-hosted GoCD and Jenkins and Azure DevOps managed service. However, self-hosted solutions come with challenges like updating the server and application frequently, updating agents, higher costing. On the other hand, managed services like Azure DevOps reduce the O&M cost, but it is expensive to operate for larger teams.

Alibaba Cloud DevOps Pipeline (Flow) has a neat user interface and experience. Anyone with some knowledge of DevOps can quickly start working with Flow.

This blog post will give an overview of the service, and future blog posts will cover practical examples on how to build pipelines and use them for real-world scenarios.

Advantages of using Alibaba Cloud DevOps Pipelines

Easy Deployment:

• One with an Alibaba Cloud account can activate the services free by navigating to alibabacloud.com/product/apsara-deveops/flow.
• There are no software or hardware to purchase

Simple Management:

• All the operations and managements are on Alibaba Cloud
• One can add or remove users easily.

Tenant Isolation:

• Users can create multiple workspaces
• Each workspace is isolated from the other and does not have access to the data/configuration.

High Stability and Reliability:

• DevOps Pipeline Flow services deployed on multiple zones that give 99.99% availability
• Resources are scaled automatically based on the needs.

Various Supported Pipeline Sources:

• Any public or private, managed or self-hosted git repositories connection is possible.

Guaranteed Business Delivery with High Quality:

• DevOps Pipelines steps provide distinct functionality
• Ready to use functions can build docker images, code scan for the vulnerability
• Offers automated and manual triggers for the execution of the steps

Better Support for the Software Release:

• Integrates with all Alibaba Cloud services
• Supports multiple cloud vendors
• Supports deployment strategies like canary and blue-green
• Supports Kubernetes deployment

Alibaba Cloud DevOps Pipelines - Flow - Features

Following are the high-level features provided by Alibaba Cloud DevOps Pipelines.

Code Compilation and Building:

• Pipeline steps provide direct support to compile the code
• Current steps support Java and NodeJs however, one can build a custom compilation platform to support any other programming language.

Package Creation:

• The code artifacts creation step helps build and push the artifacts to artifact repositories.
• Building Docker images and pushing them to the repository steps are readily available.

Automated Deployment:

-Automated triggers can monitor actions like repository update and execute a deployment.

• Scheduled deployment can trigger deployment at the given date and time to perform a deployment.

Continuous Integration:

• Automated triggers also help in continuous integration without anyone triggering the process.

Static Code Scan:

• When writing this post, DevOps Pipeline supports static code scan for JAVA-based applications.
• Code scan with tools like Sonarqube and Trivy is possible with custom environment building.

To know more and explore the Alibaba Cloud DevOps Pipelines - Flow, please join our online event: https://www.linkedin.com/events/alibabacloudflow-devopstool6884422916268793856/

Join the Alibaba Cloud Experts Discord group to stay informed about future events. https://discord.gg/fCN8EgHEGf