Improve the delivery efficiency of enterprise products (1) -- one click installation and upgrade of enterprise applications

Automated delivery through application models

Enterprise application refers to supporting enterprises 、 Software system for various business operations of institutions or government agencies . In addition to supporting collaborative work within the organization , Enterprise applications also support enterprises and their suppliers 、 Collaboration and coordination between business partners and users .

The complexity of each enterprise application is different , But it can often be subdivided into multiple components that cooperate with each other . Take a lightweight system as an example , It should also be divided into business system and database at least . Large systems may contain dozens of components , Several components can also form modules . Some configurations need to be defined between these components or modules , To realize the correlation and dependence between each other . Such a complex scene , It's really hard to do ToB Implementation and delivery personnel of software manufacturers .

Implementation, deployment and upgrading of enterprise applications in traditional mode , Its difficulty 、 The cost is directly proportional to the complexity of enterprise applications . This is because in the traditional mode , The implementation and delivery personnel are more manual , Manually deploy service components 、 Edit profile . Processes that cannot be automated are inefficient and error prone , The number and complexity of enterprise application components will add up these common problems .

Enterprise application delivery in the cloud native era relies on various container delivery platforms , By playing containerization 、 Advantages of platform , Solved environmental consistency 、 Automatic operation and maintenance 、 Problems such as fault self-healing . In the scenario of simplifying application delivery and upgrade , The ability of the selected platform is very important .

Rainbond It is an open source cloud native multi cloud application management platform , Both of them Kubernetes Cluster automation management capability , And one click installation and upgrade capability of enterprise applications .Rainbond Application Model（RAM） Is based on Rainbond An application model is proposed , Through the modeling and abstraction of enterprise applications , collocation Rainbond The application market mechanism of the platform , Finally, the one click installation is realized / upgrade . Highly automated delivery experience , Improve the efficiency of enterprise application delivery , Lower delivery costs .

RAM Model abstraction , It includes all service components contained in enterprise applications and the relationship between components . This high-level abstraction does not matter how many service components are contained within the enterprise application , It doesn't matter whether the relationship between components is complex . Application template （RAM The specific implementation of the model in the field of application market ） Can be published to Rainbond Unique application market , The released application template can be regarded as the installation package of enterprise applications , No matter how complex the original architecture is 、 Number of internal components , Can complete one click installation and upgrade .

In order to adapt to the broader delivery field ,RAM The model is trying to Open Application Model（OAM） evolution .OAM It is a new application model proposed by the industry , It is designed to be able to , Deliver more robust enterprise applications in complex environments .

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Use Rainbond One click installation of enterprise applications

Rainbond The application template is the concrete implementation of the application model , It is the carrier of one click installation of enterprise applications , How to make an application template can refer to the following tutorial .

Making application template tutorial

When the application template is made , Release to the application market , You can use the application template to install , The one click installation process can perfectly reproduce the enterprise application from the development environment to the delivery environment . Features of components 、 Mirror image 、 plug-in unit 、 The dependencies remain the same .

In practical terms , Click Install template on the right side of the application , Selected team 、 colony 、 application 、 Version and other necessary information , Confirm to start installing the target enterprise application .

Rainbond It can support various customer environments , Whether it's a server or a virtual machine , Is it online or offline ,X86 It's still made in China CPU Can support , As long as the customer environment can install Rainbond, You can use the application template to install .

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Make an application template that can be installed with one click

The enterprise application carried by the application template , With the help of one click installation capability, it can be delivered and deployed quickly . However, whether the delivered enterprise application can automatically enter the available state after installation , It has a great relationship with the production process of application template . Next , Let's introduce , An application template that can be installed with one click , What kind of “ self-improvement ”.

Environment variables define connection information

Accessible address , Is the key to the interrelated calls between components . Usually , The accessible address will be in IP:Port Or domain name . However IP Changes , It is inevitable in the delivery scenario , This seriously affects the ability of one click installation to be available . So don't write the connection address as a fixed value , Instead, it is designed into a form that can be dynamically picked up and configured through environment variables .Rainbond The platform provides very powerful connection information injection function , Specifically used to handle access addresses between components .

Data is automatically initialized

Persistent data for enterprise applications , It should be separated from the program file . All data that needs to be persisted , Should have a separate directory , These directories before the container starts , Can be null . If there are multiple directories that need to be persisted , They should preferably have the same parent directory . All database middleware 、 Business persistent data needs to support automatic initialization . There are many ways to initialize data , Developers can choose according to the actual situation ：

• Business code management data version （ recommend ）

Developers add logic inside enterprise applications , Complete the initialization of the database structure . This is a very general method , When the enterprise application starts, it automatically detects whether there is a specified table structure in the database that can be connected , If it does not exist, perform an initialization . The reason why this method is more respected is that developers can also use this method to upgrade the database table structure . Reference resources The source code construction realizes the free upgrade of database table structure You can learn about a method based on Liquibase combination Rainbond Database version solution with source code construction ability .

• The ability provided by the official image

For all kinds of common database middleware in the market , Its official images have the ability of automatic data initialization . Including but not limited to Mysql、Mongo、Postgresql And other common databases .

• Make initialization plug-ins for unstructured data

For more general scenarios , The platform supports data initialization for the specified persistent directory of service components with plug-in mechanism , This method uses external object storage to keep the data that needs to be initialized . How to use the plug-in , Reference resources Universal data initialization plug-in Understand this best practice .

Reasonable decoupling scheme

In order to achieve the goal of one click installation of enterprise applications , It is necessary to divide different modules that can be decoupled , Apply the template in the way of . Application template corresponding to each module , Should be able to be installed and run independently . The delivery implementation personnel shall meet the business needs of the end customer , Deploy multiple application modules with one click on demand , And assemble it under the graphical interface , That is to complete the overall delivery of enterprise applications . For enterprise application developers , Reasonable decoupling scheme , It can achieve the effect of modular reuse , Reduce the repetitive workload of developers .

Deeply understand how to divide modules reasonably ： Use Rainbond Package business modules , Realize business building block assembly

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Use Rainbond One click upgrade of enterprise applications

from RAM The implemented application template has version control mechanism , This means that you can quickly upgrade and rollback between different versions of the same application template .

For developers , Make the required changes on the source application side , Whether it's built after code changes , Or add other components , Will be superimposed on the new version of the application template in the next application template release process . Developers must pay attention to the version number defined at the time of release ,Rainbond Use it to determine whether to upgrade .

For delivery personnel , You only need to import different versions of application templates into the delivery environment ,Rainbond It will automatically identify different versions of the same application template , And perform one click upgrade operation .

And when it has been delivered , In the running application page , Small A Found the entrance to the upgrade .Rainbond Recognized the latest version , The upgrade operation is also triggered by one click , Very easy to use .

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Implementation principle of one click installation and one click upgrade

be based on RAM Why can the application template implemented by the model install complex applications with one click ？ First, you need to understand the internal structure of the application template .

The application template consists of two parts ： Application metadata 、 Container image compressed package .

Application metadata

Application metadata is responsible for describing the characteristics of the application and its internal components . let me put it another way , Applying metadata is right RAM Description of the model . These metadata will be saved in Rainbond In the database ,Rainbond By picking up these metadata , Understand what kind of application you need to install . The main contents of these metadata are as follows ：

attribute	Level
apply name	application
Application version	application
Dependencies between components	application
Gateway policy	Components
Component name	Components
Component image	Components
Component environment variables	Components
Component plug-in configuration	Components
Component storage	Components
Component port configuration	Components
Component deployment method	Components
Component health check strategy	Components

Container mirror

The source of the business container image , Once the template is imported , The container image will be loaded into Rainbond The referenced container is mirrored in the warehouse . When starting each component ,Rainbond The corresponding image will be pulled according to the image address recorded in the metadata .

After parsing the application metadata, insert , And the import of container image , Delivery personnel can install enterprise applications in the customer environment with one click .

After the one click installation of enterprise application is completed ,Rainbond It can be guaranteed to run . If you want to go further , Ensure that the business logic inside the enterprise application can also work normally , You need to pay more attention to automation improvement in the production process of application template .

upgrade

The principle of one click upgrade is similar to that of one click installation , The one click upgrade process actually changes the version of application metadata and container image respectively .

The upgrade of container image is easy to handle , Just reference different tag that will do . For all components in the upgradeable application , The following metadata changes will be overwritten during the upgrade process .

attribute	Level	The rules
Components	application	newly added , to update
plug-in unit	application	newly added
Configuration group	application	newly added
Mirror image	Components	to update
Start command	Components	to update
environment variable	Components	newly added
Component connection information	Components	newly added
port	Components	newly added , to update
Storage	Components	newly added
The configuration file	Components	newly added , to update
Health detection probe	Components	newly added , to update , Delete
Monitoring charts	Components	newly added , to update
Monitoring point	Components	newly added , to update
plug-in unit	Components	newly added
Component dependencies	Components	newly added , Delete
Storage dependencies	Components	newly added , Delete

It is worth noting that , Upgrade based on application template , Only the upgrade of the application is included . In the real world , Often involves changes to persistent data . One of the most common situations , It is the table structure of the database used by enterprise applications , It needs to change with the upgrade of the application . What I've mentioned before The source code construction realizes the free upgrade of database table structure programme , You can handle the version control of this table structure .

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Enterprise application management and operation and maintenance

The installation and upgrade of enterprise applications are one-time , And management and operation and maintenance are long-term and continuous .

When the enterprise application is delivered to the customer environment , Operation and maintenance personnel need the ability to control and manage the operation environment . modern IT Infrastructure is very complex , The operation and maintenance personnel want to work on the physical machine 、 It is not easy to coordinate different environments such as virtual machines , Want to be in the public cloud 、 The ease between private cloud and even hybrid cloud poses a challenge to its technical capability . If you can have an easy-to-use platform to smooth out the differences between different infrastructures , That will greatly simplify the management of operation and maintenance personnel .

understand Cloud native application management , Like managing mobile phones APP Manage enterprise applications as well .

summary

This paper focuses on the implementation process of enterprise application automation installation and upgrade , This process is very suitable for the standardized delivery of enterprise products without function customization , Docking development environment can realize the continuous delivery of customers , Improve 10 More than times the delivery efficiency . However , Standardized delivery can only account for a minority in the process of enterprise product delivery , How to provide delivery efficiency for personalized delivery scenarios that require customized functions ？ We will cover in detail in the next article .