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Community Blog Web App Service: Simple, Secure, Speed Way to Deploy Applications

Web App Service: Simple, Secure, Speed Way to Deploy Applications

Web App Service is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that allows you to run and manage web applications, mobile applications, and API-based applications.

What Is Web App Service?

Web App Service is a fully managed platform for deploying applications, including web applications, mobile applications, and API applications. These applications can be developed in any supported languages, including Java, Node.js, PHP, Go and Python. Without the need to manage the underlying infrastructure, you can deploy, scale, modify and monitor your applications in an easy, efficient, secure, and flexible manner in Web App

Why Use Web App Service?

As a fully managed platform for deploying applications, Web App Service (Web+) provides a variety of benefits.

Fully managed application platform

Web App Service is a fully managed platform for deploying applications. That is, you do not need to purchase or configure underlying resources and runtime environments. You only need to upload application deployment packages and submit resource requirements. Web App Service automatically creates and orchestrates all resources for you.

Multi-language ecosystem

Web App Service supports various mainstream programming languages, such as Java, Node.js, PHP, Go, Python, and Ruby (coming soon). Besides, you can use Docker images to configure custom runtime environments for use in special scenarios or develop plug-ins to support more programming languages.

Multiple access methods

You can access Web App Service in a variety of methods. You can use the Web App Service console to manage applications and deployment environments on a graphical user interface (GUI). You can use the command-line interface (CLI) to run commands to interact with Web App Service. You can also use shell scripts to combine basic commands to reusable toolkits suitable for specific scenarios. Besides, you can use the API or the SDKs for various programming languages to integrate Web App Service with any third-party systems, such as continuous integration or continuous delivery (CI/CD) system or an application marketplace.

Open platform and tools

Web App Service provides the plug-in system and configuration specifications for you to build an open platform and a tool ecosystem. Web App Service supports resource plug-ins and software plug-ins. Resource plug-ins provide access to various types of infrastructure services, such as databases, caches, log services, and application performance monitoring (APM) systems. Software plug-ins allow you to install specified libraries and software in the operating system to support custom programming languages or application runtimes. Also, Web App Service provides the configuration description file Wpfile. You can use Wpfile to customize the configurations of plug-ins.

Enhancement of developer productivity

Web App Service configures and manages infrastructure for you and helps you manage technology stacks of applications so you do not need to spend time maintaining them. Web App Service frees you from time-consuming tasks such as the management and configuration of servers, databases, load balancers, firewalls, and networks so that you can focus on developing code. Web App Service allows you to build an application deployment environment with no server management or configuration. Within a project team, an operations and maintenance (O&M) engineer can adjust the deployment configuration information and distribute the configuration description file to developers and testers through file-sharing or a code repository. In this way, the deployment environment can be replicated quickly. In open-source scenarios, you can use the public configuration description file distributed by Web App Service or an open-source application provider to build a trial or production environment for an open-source application quickly.

Excellent resource control

You can customize the most appropriate Alibaba Cloud resources based on application deployment requirements. The resources include Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances, databases, Server Load Balancer (SLB) instances, and networks. After you customize the required resources, Web App Service manages and configures these resources for you.

Easy O&M and monitoring

Web App Service provides built-in environment monitoring capabilities. You can check the health status and performance of deployment environments in real-time in the console or CLI. Also, you can check and download environment logs in real-time in the console or on the local terminal. This helps you resolve issues encountered during the startup and running of applications. Web App Service provides diagnostic features for different programming languages to help you resolve performance issues and various thorny issues.

Where to Use Web App Service?

Common web applications

Web App Service supports multiple deployment modes for web applications. Web App Service supports standalone deployment with minimal configuration, which is suitable for small-scale test scenarios. It also supports distributed deployment with a complex configuration, which is suitable for large-scale production scenarios.

Flexible application deployment

The configuration requirements of an application may vary with deployment environments. In development and testing environments, applications have low requirements for system performance and availability. Therefore, you can use the standalone deployment mode to reduce the cost. In staging and production environments, however, applications need to be deployed in distributed deployment mode to meet the service capability requirements. Web App Service flexibly supports both application deployment modes.

Automated and fully managed environments

There is no need to concern yourself with the management and configuration of the underlying infrastructure. Web App Service automatically manages the system resources and software environments according to the resource requests that you submit. Web App Service saves you from the hassles of purchasing, configuring, scaling, and releasing resources.

In-depth integration of Alibaba Cloud services

Relying on various infrastructure services that Alibaba Cloud provides, including Elastic Compute Service (ECS), RDS, Object Storage Service (OSS), SLB, CloudMonitor, and CDN, Web App Service allows you to build a cloud-native web application system quickly.

Mobile applets

Web App Service allows you to deploy back-end applications of mobile applets. A mobile applet consists of the front-end application and the back-end application, which are strictly separate. The front-end application runs in the host application on a mobile phone, and the back-end application runs on the infrastructure provided by a cloud vendor. By using Web App Service, you can easily manage the back-end application of a mobile applet. Within a project team, you can share a configuration template or submit it to a remote repository. All team members can use the configuration template to create a deployment environment with the same configuration quickly.

Develop back-end applications in any supported languages

You can develop back-end applications of mobile applets in any supported languages, including but not limited to Java, Python, Node.js, PHP, Ruby, and Go. You can also use Docker images or plug-ins to build your runtime environment.

Infrastructure as code

Wpfile, the configuration description file of Web App Service, can be managed and distributed along with the application code. Any users who have access to the file can use the Web App Service console or command-line interface (CLI) to create a deployment environment with the same configuration.

Create deployment environments on demand

The deployment environments used for product development and testing are unstable. Once an issue occurs, the most cost-effective solution is to rebuild the deployment environments. Web App Service allows you to rebuild deployment environments or create new ones at any time. Also, you can release infrequently used resources in Web App Service at any time to reduce the resource cost.

Open-source applications

By using a CLI tool to integrate Web App Service with continuous integration or continuous delivery (CI/CD) system, developers can quickly build, test, accept and publish their open-source applications. By providing the configuration description file Wpfile, maintainers can help users configure and initialize the open-source applications. Different runtime environments are required to run different applications. With the plug-in system of Web App Service, maintainers can develop plug-ins to use any third-party components as required, without needing to wait for official support from Web App Service.

End-to-end process from development to delivery

Web App Service can help developers, testers, publishers, and users resolve their issues related to environment deployment. Web App Service can help them generate deliverables from code or generate final usable systems from the deliverables.

More flexible component dependency

Open-source application maintainers can use the plug-in system that Web App Service provides to develop plug-ins to support the resources and runtime environments that applications require. These plug-ins can be kept for private use or contributed to the community as new open-source projects.

Open-source application ecosystem

With the concerted efforts of Web App Service, open-source application maintainers, and the entire open-source community, Web App Service has been dedicated to creating an open ecosystem that allows users to experience open-source applications quickly.

Related Product

Web App Service

Web App Service allows you to deploy, scale, adjust and monitor applications in an easy, efficient, secure, and flexible manner. You do not need to maintain the underlying infrastructure. You only pay for the cloud resources that you use.

Related Blog

Web+: Alibaba Cloud's Web App Service (Part 1)

Web+ is a fully managed Web App Service offered by Alibaba Cloud. It is an extensive framework that supports the deployment of web, API, and mobile applications. Web+ is based on the PAAS architecture and provides an easy approach for developers to deploy, manage, scale, and monitor their application without having to worry about infrastructure issues and dependencies. This flexible, efficient, and secure architecture is based on the highly evolved Alibaba Cloud platform.

The Web App Service is highly scalable and integrates tools that have set the benchmarks in industry standards. One of the most prominent points here is the language support, as a developer seeks support for the programming language of their choice.

Web+: Alibaba Cloud's Web App Service (Part 2)

Web+ or the Web App Service by Alibaba Cloud enables the developer to choose between some suitable tools and services to deploy the application with. The complex architecture that powers this PAAS provides the user with a simple, robust, and reliable architecture to deploy their applications with.

We already discussed the general aspects of Web+ in Part 1 of this series, but let's do a short recap. Web+ is a fully managed Web App Service offered by Alibaba Cloud. It is an extensive framework that supports the deployment of web, open-source, and mobile applications.

Web+: The Web App Service (Part 3)

In the third part of this series about Web+, the web app service from Alibaba Cloud, we are going to discuss the deployment environment, metrics, and configurations applicable to Web+. We are also going to show you how to configure a deployment environment and application resource usage scenarios.

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