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Community Blog Enterprise Distributed Application Service - An Overview

Enterprise Distributed Application Service - An Overview

This article gives an overview of the Alibaba Cloud Enterprise Distributed Application Service (EDAS).

By Shantanu Kaushik

Over the last decade, Alibaba Cloud has continuously introduced several enterprise-level middleware solutions. These middleware products have established themselves as leading tools due to the impeccable integration with other products and services within the Alibaba Cloud universe. The Enterprise Distributed Application Service (EDAS) is one such middleware product from Alibaba Cloud.

In this article, we are going to present an overview of the Alibaba Cloud Enterprise Distributed Application Service (EDAS).

Introduction

Alibaba Cloud Enterprise Distributed Application Service (EDAS) is a fully managed [Platform as a Service (PaaS)] service. It is used for microservices management and other application hosting scenarios. Alibaba Cloud EDAS is a full-stack solution that enables application development to deployment cycle management, allowing you to perform monitoring and O&M.

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Features | EDAS | Alibaba Cloud

Enterprise Application Middleware

Alibaba Cloud EDAS is capable of performing all of the management tasks from development to deployment of an application. Based on Platform as a Service (PaaS), EDAS is well-equipped to perform basic management and maintenance operations.

Alibaba Cloud EDAS enables you to centrally manage the application during the entirety of its lifecycle from the EDAS console. Using EDAS, you can easily manage large-scale deployed applications panning thousands of instances. It could be generic applications, containerized applications, or Microservices. EDAS enables you to quickly and efficiently perform task management and maintenance operations.

With an EDAS console, you can:

  • Create an application instance
  • Deploy an application
  • Scale (Up or Down) - Application Resources
  • Start an application
  • Delete an application

Alibaba Cloud EDAS supports auto scaling. You can manually scale up or down or leverage the auto-scaling feature that is already there. Alibaba Cloud EDAS keeps a close check on CPU, memory, and workload and automatically adjusts the resources as needed.

With the deep integration of Alibaba Cloud RAM (Resource and Access Management), you can easily define roles and set permissions for different teams and operators. You might have multiple teams like developers, DevOps, or Machine managers, but, with EDAS you can easily differentiate and provide authorization to a user or user groups depending on which application resource should be made available to them for maintenance and management.

A distributed network resource is harder to manage. Alibaba Cloud EDAS efficiently manages distribution, management, and reconfiguration of all elements from a centralized EDAS console.

Alibaba Cloud EDAS supports and leverages the Global Transaction Service (GTS), which is also a middleware product. It is a high-performance, distributed transaction service that is highly useful for solving data consistency issues with distributed environments. Together, EDAS and GTS can help you quickly implement distributed database transactions or multi-database transactions. This combination can be used in various service scenarios for high-performance and secure usability transactions.

Alibaba Cloud EDAS allows for the creation of primary and sub-account systems. This distribution allows you to manage resources based on team priority. Elastic Compute Service (ECS) resources are organized on primary and sub-account systems for quick allocation wherever required.

Microservices | EDAS | Alibaba Cloud

Alibaba Cloud EDAS supports features such as throttling and phased release. These features help you easily build and deploy microservice-based applications with Alibaba Cloud. With EDAS, there are no requirements to build microservices dependencies since these are handled by Apache Dubbo or Spring Cloud automatically. Alibaba Cloud HSF is a time-tested framework to work with Microservices.

Let's start with a classification of Microservices. Look at the diagram below to understand how the flow works:

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Alibaba Cloud EDAS supports:

1.  High-Speed Service Framework (HSF)

HSF is a distributed remote procedure call framework (RPC). HSF is used to connect multiple service systems and for disconnecting multiple systems from each other. HSF is used to conveniently construct distributed applications using common function modules. This takes away the need for the user to perform complex technical operations required for a distributed architecture.

Let's discuss some primary features of Alibaba Cloud HSF:

  • Synchronous | Asynchronous Calls

Alibaba Cloud HSF utilizes synchronous calls as a default setting. The consumer code must maintain a synchronous wait queue for the returned results. However, as a user, you can configure HSF to utilize the asynchronous method of receiving returned results. This cuts down on the time taken for the RPC.

  • HTTP Calls | Generic Calls

Alibaba Cloud HSF supports exposure of services over HTTP, and the service can be initiated using the HTTP protocol. With generic calls, HSF utilizes the API to execute programming calls. Generic calls are known to reduce dependencies when utilized with Microservices in a loosely coupled scenario.

2.  Apache Dubbo

Let's take a look at the Apache Dubbo framework for 2.6 and 2.7:

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Alibaba Cloud EDAS supports the Apache Dubbo microservices framework. To implement Dubbo, EDAS enables the user to do so by adding the dependencies and configuration of services with Dubbo. This enables EDAS features for enterprise application hosting with the inclusion of EDAS features for a better and more service-oriented microservices framework.

By implementing EDAS with Apache Dubbo, you can leverage functionalities, such as:

3.  Spring Cloud

Spring Cloud, along with Alibaba Cloud EDAS, simplifies the overall application development. It is a zero-code intrusion microservice framework for complete microservices management and maintenance operations. You can use Spring Cloud with EDAS to directly deploy and manage applications. Advanced monitoring and alert service tools can be used without modifying any code.

Containerized |Application Hosting | EDAS | Alibaba Cloud

Alibaba Cloud EDAS enables the user to manage their containerized application with the help of Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK). The EDAS console can be used to manage the applications without worrying about the underlying details of the container service. The container service with EDAS enables the user to easily manage, monitor, and diagnose applications and to use containers for better resource utilization.

With EDAS and ACK, you can:

  • Easily and quickly build containerized microservice architecture with Kubernetes
  • Have a fully managed service that doesn't require resource orchestration from the user. This allows the user to concentrate on application lifecycle management.
  • Automate the image building process using EDAS and the application deployment using Kubernetes clusters. As a user, you can easily deploy applications using JAR or WAR packages.

Alibaba Cloud EDAS makes generic application hosting easy to do. Just like with containerized application hosting, EDAS enables easy deployment using WAR and JAR packages or through images. You can easily manage the application lifecycle right from the EDAS console. All basic and advanced management or maintenance operations can be executed from the EDAS console.

Wrapping Up

Alibaba Cloud has worked alongside numerous industries and enterprises to gather and build a network of tools and solutions that support and uphold the values that a true solution should offer. With multiple paradigm shifts in the technology world, Alibaba Cloud has continually progressed with its research and development.

Integration of tools and services throughout the application lifecycle has made this platform among the most valued and chosen ones. Enterprise application deployment using a distributed system is not an easy feat. With Alibaba Cloud EDAS, you can achieve this feat conveniently.

Business continuity, security, scalability, reliability in operations, and disaster management scenarios have to be accounted for when selecting a service. Alibaba Cloud EDAS checks all the boxes that a middleware should check. On top of that, EDAS is backed by industry-leading infrastructure support from Alibaba Cloud, making it one of the best services for deploying, managing, and maintaining microservice-based applications, generic, or containerized applications.

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