How Can We Build Platform Engineering?

Clearly Define the Objectives and Requirements for Platform Engineering

Platform engineering aims to accelerate software delivery, improve lifecycle management, boost development efficiency through a self-service IDP. To this end, you need to analyze your company's development process and identify the key issues that require improvement. For example, you may want to simplify environment setup, streamline deployments, or reduce resource waiting times. Talk to each team to gather their needs and figure out what services, tools, and features are needed to support the developer's work. Based on the requirement analysis, define the objectives for the platform engineering, including but not limited to:

• Provide a unified platform for application development, testing, and deployment.
• Set up automated CI/CD pipelines for integration and continuous delivery.
• Gather and reuse public components and services across your organization.
• Establish a comprehensive monitoring and O&M mechanism.
• Secure the platform and maintain compliance with regulations.

Set Up an IDP Based on Huawei Cloud

Huawei Cloud provides a variety of cloud services to help you quickly build an IDP.

1. CodeArts is a one-stop platform that provides out-of-the-box cloud services for requirement delivery, code commit, check, build, verification, deployment, and release throughout the entire software lifecycle.
2. ServiceStage is an application management and O&M platform that lets you deploy, roll out, monitor, and maintain applications all in one place. It supports technology stacks such as Java, PHP, Python, Node.js, Docker, and Tomcat, and supports microservice applications such as Apache ServiceComb Java Chassis (Java chassis) and Spring Cloud.
3. Cloud Service Engine (CSE) is a cloud middleware used for microservice applications. It supports ServiceComb engines contributed to Apache and open-source enhanced Nacos engines and application gateways. You can also use other cloud services to quickly build a cloud-native microservice system, implementing quick development and high-availability O&M of microservice applications.
4. Cloud Application Engine (CAE) is a serverless hosting service for webs and microservice applications. It provides one-stop application hosting with fast deployment, low costs, and simplified O&M. CAE releases applications from source code, software packages, and image packages quickly and easily, with auto scaling to the second, all billed pay-per-use. The whole application lifecycle is manageable with observable metrics.

Organize and Consolidate Public Services

Organizing and consolidating public components and services across an organization is the key to maximize platform engineering value. To do this, you need to start by finding the software components used across different applications, like authentication, log, and message components. Make them consistent and reusable by setting standard interfaces, data formats, and error-handling methods. Then, encapsulate these public components into independent microservices and deploy them on CSE. CSE's service registry center allows for microservice registry and discovery. Other application systems can call the APIs of these microservices to use these common components, avoid repeated development, improve development efficiency, and ensure code quality consistency. You can also use the service governance function of CSE to further improve the reliability and performance of public components. You need to prepare detailed component user guides and API documentation for developers to access and use. In addition, you need to establish a version control system for components to streamline upgrades, maintenance, and ongoing improvements.

Establish a Reliable Monitoring and O&M System

You can use Application Operations Management (AOM) to centrally monitor microservice performance metrics, such as the response time, error rate, and number of calls, helping you quickly locate and rectify faults.

You can use Log Tank Service (LTS) to collect and analyze system logs and application logs. LTS supports log search, alarm reporting, and report generation, helping you locate faults and analyze performance.

You can use Application Performance Management (APM) to monitor application call traces, analyze performance bottlenecks, locate abnormal requests, and improve application performance.

Improve and Optimize Platform Engineering

Platform engineering is a continuous optimization process driven by user needs and technology updates. Regularly communicate with development, testing, and operations teams to gather their suggestions and feedback on the platform. Analyze monitoring data to identify performance bottlenecks and optimize resource allocation.

Monitor the development of new technologies such as cloud native, containerization, microservices, and serverless, and evaluate their application value on the platform. Choose appropriate projects to test new technologies, then expand their use once proven effective. Improve the platform's user guides, API documentation, and best practices to help new users get started quickly. Organize regular training sessions to enhance the team's understanding and usage of the platform.