Overview of Fleet Application Management
Fleet Application Management simplifies the management of system life cycles and the operation of resources deployed on OCI. Fleet Application Management provides a centralized platform to automate tasks, validate compliance, and enhance operational efficiency across an enterprise.
You can use Fleet Application Management to perform the following functions:
- Group resources by similarities, such as Compute instances, databases, application or environment type, or any other relevant criteria. These grouped resources are referred to as a fleet. You can group resources by manually selecting them or by dynamically using rules based on tags or resource types. Grouping ensures that real-time updates are applied to large numbers of resources together.
- Maintain patch compliance for operating systems, databases, and middle-tier components by applying available patches across these resources through a one-time or recurring schedule. This patching helps you mitigate the risks associated with outdated resource states, for example, applying critical security updates to address the vulnerabilities in an application.
- Monitor and query the current compliance status of a fleet or each resource based on the applicable compliance policy. Compliance information provides visibility into the deviations from the expected state. Also, you can schedule compliance issue fixes or on-demand operational actions within a defined maintenance window or by choosing a custom timeline.
Benefits of Using Fleet Application Management
- Simplify and automate resource management workflows on OCI.
- Group resources based on your requirements, ensuring efficient management, and streamlined updates.
- Easily apply patches to resources, ensuring that critical updates are promptly applied to reduce potential security vulnerabilities.
- Ensure regulatory adherence and consistent deployment practices through compliance policies.
Key Components
Review the key components used in Fleet Application Management.
- application or application type
-
A software program running in an environment that solves business problems classified under a family of products or product suites.
- properties
- A global-level metadata element with a name and value association that can be assigned to a fleet.
- credentials
- The environment-specific credentials that are required for target discovery and lifecycle management operations of a resource.
- compliance
- Ensures that the state of resources and their application components have the latest patch level applied to them successfully. As a result, the resources are protected or otherwise remediated against new security threats.
- environment or environment type
- A prioritization or category associated with a resource based on the implementation phase of the application that the resource hosts. The environment types can be Development, Test, Stage, User Acceptance Test (UAT), Production, or All.
- fleet
- A grouping construct through which Fleet Application Management performs lifecycle management operations on resources. Following are types of fleets:
- product: Group resources with a defined software product and select the product during fleet creation.
- environment: Group resources with a defined application type and environment type, and select these types during fleet creation.
- group: Create a fleet of fleets with or without a defined application or environment boundary.
- generic: Group resources without setting limits on product, application, or environment.
- job
- An individual occurrence of a lifecycle maintenance operation.
- lifecycle management
- A maintenance operation applied to resources, such as managing software patches, to avoid the risks arising from resources becoming obsolete.
- maintenance window
- Defines a timeline for a maintenance operation. You can decide on this timeline with an insight into business hours, or a cloud provider can start an activity for handling critical security vulnerabilities.
- product
- A software platform installed on a resource, such as Oracle Java or Oracle WebLogic Application Server.
- resource
- An existing OCI Compute or database instance.
- runbook
- Defines the workflow for handling the maintenance operation on a resource by including a set of tasks involved with required execution variables.
- schedule
- Specifies a date-time selection based on the maintenance window or custom time frame when the maintenance is performed with recurrent or one-time options.
- task
- A step to run on a resource target that represents the smallest unit of a workflow.
- target
- A set of identified operating environments or product homes for a resource as discovered by Fleet Application Management, and which can undergo lifecycle management.
- target discovery
- The process of scanning and capturing the state of software inventory found in a resource.