Application Management
Group ECS instances, databases, and load balancers into applications to monitor, secure, and operate them as a unit.
Key concepts
| Concept | Description |
|---|---|
| Resource group (project) | The smallest unit for permission control and financial management. Organize resources in your Alibaba Cloud account by project. See Terms. |
| Application | The smallest unit within a resource group for resource management. |
| Application group | A deployment environment within an application. Application groups in the same application can span regions, use different configurations, and connect to different SLB instances. |
Application group association rules
ECS instances in an application group associate with RDS and SLB instances differently depending on the environment:
-
Staging and production environments: Instances share the same RDS instance but connect to different SLB instances.
-
Canary release and production environments: Instances share the same RDS and SLB instance.
-
Cross-region deployments: Instances in different regions cannot share the same RDS or SLB instance.
Benefits
| Benefit | Description |
|---|---|
| Resource visibility | View all resources, billing, security risks, and monitoring data from a single dashboard. |
| Group-based O&M | Run commands, download files, and automate tasks across an application group with OOS. |
| Role-based access control | Assign administrator, manager, and user roles with granular permissions. |
| Security monitoring | Detect configuration risks, vulnerabilities, and baseline issues in one view. |
| Cost tracking | Analyze costs per application group to optimize spending. |
| CI/CD integration | Deploy applications through Apsara DevOps pipelines, from code compilation to production deployment. |
User roles
Application Management supports three roles.
| Role | Permissions |
|---|---|
| System administrator | Manage application information, tags, and resource groups. |
| Application manager | Create resources, allocate users, modify configurations, perform O&M, and approve applications. |
| Application user | Monitor applications, view logs, check status, and troubleshoot issues. Cannot create, delete, or modify resources. |
Create and manage an application
Prerequisites
Ensure the following:
-
You have an Alibaba Cloud account with the required permissions.
-
(Optional) You have existing resources such as VPCs, vSwitches, and ECS instances to import.
Workflow
The following diagram shows the workflow.
| Step | Description |
|---|---|
| Create an application | Configure the manager, contact (notification recipient), and users. Create application groups based on roles. Select a region, then import existing resources or create new ones. See Step 3 below. |
| Monitor and manage resources by group | View resources, security risks, monitoring data, alerts, and events on the application details page. Use Apsara DevOps or OOS for O&M. See Step 5 below. |
| (Optional) Modify or delete an application | Add application groups or delete unneeded applications. Tags and resource groups cannot be changed after creation. See Step 6 below. |
Procedure
-
Go to the ECS console - Application Management page.
-
Create an application and group resources. See Create an application group to manage resources.
-
On the My Applications page, click the target application name to open the details page.
-
Monitor and manage resources by group on the application details page.
Tab Description Overview View billing details of application groups. See View the cost analysis of an application group. Resources Import and manage resources such as ECS instances. Remove instances, connect to instances, run commands, and change configurations. See Create an application group to manage resources. O&M Automate O&M with OOS: send remote commands, download files, and create custom tasks. See Perform automated O&M on resources in application groups. Security Risks View configuration check results, pending alerts, pending vulnerabilities, and baseline issues. Monitoring and Alerting Configure alert rules for resources. See Configure resource monitoring and alerting rules. Events View triggered system events, including instance migration, scheduled O&M, unexpected O&M, billing, and security events. See Overview of ECS system events and Subscribe to ECS system event notifications. Publications Deploy applications through Apsara DevOps pipelines for code compilation, building, and deployment. See Create an Apsara DevOps pipeline to deploy applications. Cost Analysis View cost analysis per application group, ECS instance consumption details, and average usage for ECS instances, elastic IP addresses, and SLB instances. To view costs, go to the Cost Analysis page. -
(Optional) Modify or delete applications as needed.
Modify an application
To add a new application group to an application:
-
On the My Applications page, click Modify in the Actions column of the target application.
-
In the Modify Application dialog box, enter a name for the new application group.
-
Click OK.
The application name, tags, and resource groups cannot be changed after creation. If an application no longer fits your needs, create a new one.
Delete an application
To delete an application:
-
On the application details page, choose More > Delete Application.
-
In the dialog box, review the application name and configure deletion options:
-
Delete All Application Groups: Selected by default. Deletes all groups within the application.
-
Delete Resources Created for Application (Not Resources Imported for Application): Selected by default. Releases resources created for the application, such as ECS instances, cloud disks, security group rules, and SLB instances. Imported resources are disassociated but not deleted.
-
-
Click OK.
You can also delete an application from the My Applications page by clicking Delete in the Actions column.
Deletion runs asynchronously. The application is deleted after all its groups are removed. Back up important data and configurations before deletion — they cannot be restored afterward.
References
| Method | Description |
|---|---|
| Resource groups | Group cloud resources by usage, permissions, and ownership. See What is Resource Group? or Resource groups. |
| Tags | Add tags to ECS resources for classification and fine-grained management. See Tags. |