This topic describes common scenarios of Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK).
DevOps and continuous delivery
Optimal continuous delivery pipeline
ACK is integrated with Jenkins to automate the DevOps pipeline that covers code submission to application deployments. The pipeline ensures that code is submitted for deployment only after the code passes automated testing. The pipeline is a new and efficient method. We recommend that you do not use traditional delivery models that include complex deployments and slow iterations.
Benefits
DevOps pipeline automation
Automates the DevOps pipeline, from code updates to code builds, image builds, and application deployments.
Environment consistency
Allows you to deliver code and runtime environments based on the same architecture.
Continuous feedback
Provides immediate feedback on each integration or delivery.
Recommended service combination
Elastic Compute Service (ECS) and ACK.
Microservices architecture
Agile development and deployment to accelerate business iteration
Your workload in the production environment is divided into multiple microservice applications. These microservice applications are managed by Alibaba Cloud image repositories. Alibaba Cloud can schedule, orchestrate, deploy, and implement the canary releases of microservices applications. Therefore, you can focus on feature updates. In the production environment, you can split your application into microservices. The microservices feature high cohesion, low coupling, and high fault tolerance. The production process on microservices is dependent on the microservice governance capability provided by Alibaba Cloud services.
The following benefits can be implemented without the need to modify code and configurations:
Elimination of risks during application updates
Eliminates the risks during application updates based on capabilities such as configuration management, graceful start and shutdown, and end-to-end canary releases.
Elimination of risks that are caused by occasional issues
Provides throttling protection, peak-load shifting, fault isolation, and degradation protection when traffic spikes or the dependent services become abnormal.
Agile development of microservices with low costs
Expands multiple development environments that are logically isolated without increasing the costs of physical servers. This resolves issues such as environment preemption and conflicts to facilitate agile development.
Recommended service combination
Microservice Engine (MSE), ECS, ApsaraDB RDS, Object Storage Service (OSS), and ACK.
References
Hybrid cloud architecture
Unified O&M of cloud resources
You can manage both cloud and on-premises resources in the ACK console. ACK does not rely on specific infrastructure. Therefore, you can use the same images and orchestration templates to deploy both cloud and on-premises applications.
Benefits
Application scaling in the cloud
During peak hours, ACK can scale out applications in the cloud and forward traffic to the scaled-out resources.
Disaster recovery in the cloud
Business systems can be deployed in the on-premises environment for service provisioning and in the cloud for disaster recovery.
On-premises development and testing
Applications that are developed and tested in the on-premises environment can be seamlessly released to the cloud.
Recommended service combination
ECS, Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), and Express Connect.
References
Auto scaling architecture
Traffic-based scalability
ACK supports auto scaling of cloud resources for your workloads based on network traffic. This prevents system failures that are caused by traffic spikes and resource waste during off-peak hours.
Benefits
Quick response
A scale-out event can be triggered within a few seconds when network traffic reaches the scale-out threshold.
Auto scaling
The scaling process is automated. This eliminates errors caused by humans.
Low costs
Containers are automatically scaled in when network traffic decreases. This allows you to maximize resource usage.
Recommended service combination
ECS and CloudMonitor
References
