Mendix In-Between Clouds

What is Mendix?

The Mendix is a platform which is completely integrated to manage the software development environment life-cycle like designing, building, deploying and managing apps.

It is the highly productive application platform which implements Agile and DevOps best practices.

Mendix provides No Code tool for business domain experts which are web-based visual app-modeling studio and Low Code tool for professional developers which is desktop-based visual app-modeling studio.

The Mendix offers the complete platform for the delivery needs of the enterprise applications through its three core principles of speed, collaboration and control.

The Deployment, monitoring and management of highly available enterprise-grade applications are supported by Mendix Platform’s cloud-native architecture and automation tools.

What are the key factors for a cloud deployment for Mendix?

The cloud selection for any application should be of organization’s requirement and its unique needs for competitive advantage.

The main key factors are

• Governance and Self-service for users
• DevOps and CI/CD(Continuous Integration/Development)
• Containers and Cloud platforms
• Standardization and Certification
• Location

The cloud should provide faster resource provisioning and maintains reliable service. An organization’s decision-making and ownership culture refers to DevOps and CI/CD is dealt with lifecycle management and organization of data operations.

For strong dev/test capabilities, container solutions like Docker and Kubernetes are offered. Cloud Foundry provides Cloud platforms for additional service layers.

All clouds should be certified for security, performance, backup and sharing. For data and services hosting for users need geographical deployment strategy for international operations.

How to implement a cloud deployment model in Mendix?

The Mendix cloud deployment options are fully optimized for the latest technologies and cloud platforms too.

Mendix cloud provides fast, easy and flexibility to run and deploy Mendix app. Mendix cloud is cloud Foundry technology which is base for Paas- based cloud.

Mendix app platform (aPaas platform) is an abstract way of providing technology because software architecture for development, deployment and run-time along with tools are made invisible.

It reduces technical, compliance and security risks. Mendix uses a multi-cloud strategy. Mendix provides, as users can select the services they require at the desired level of shielding.

What are the Clouds that support mendix?

Mendix runs on different deployment options, including public cloud, virtual private cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, and traditional (virtual) servers.

It uses ‘One-Click Deployment’ for deployment. As mendix applications are packaged, this feature builds the deployment package with all necessary asset required before staging to the cloud provider.

It also supports the creation of build packs for deployment on premises and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS).

Multi-cloud Overview

Public Cloud

Mendix supports for many public clouds such as Mendix Cloud, IBM, SAP, Microsoft, AWS, Pivotal and Google. Public cloud is a good choice when infrastructure best utilization, optimal flexibility and investing investments into operational expenses.

The clouds which mendix support are,

• Mendix Cloud

Mendix Cloud

Mendix cloud is a deployment solution in which hosting of environments can be done. It is finely optimized to run mendix applications.

It is having deep insights, alerting, high availability, backups and self-service. It is a PaaS (Platform as a service)based architecture using Cloud Foundry on top of AWS.

Mendix application runs within fully isolated containers, which consumes platform-as-a-service (PaaS) services like databases and storage.

Ref Link https://www.mendix.com/evaluation-guide/app-capabilities/mendix-cloud-overview

1. Deploy a licensed app to the Mendix Cloud – Through mendix modeler deploying to licensed cloud node and Developer portal by creating a package from Team Server.
2. Deploy via the Mendix Modeler
3. Deploy the app to an environment – Transporting the application to any of the environments Test, Acceptance or Production.
4. Deploy a Free App to the Mendix Cloud – Run in cloud from Mendix modeler.

Private Clouds

The private clouds will be accessed usually by creating logins in the respective portals. Download the build package of the clouds and the latest mendix modeler and configure the project created within the respective cloud portals and deploy with one-click deployment.

• Pivotal
• IBM
• AWS
• Cloud Foundry
• Docker

1. Docker is an open source container technology with CI/CD solutions.
2. A Mendix Docker image is created using buildpack for each release of a project.
3. The Mendix Docker buildpack created the Mendix Docker Image.
4. To run this, we need to access the Docker Container Services like Kubernetes, Azure container services, IBM Kubernetes, Docker, etc.
5. Need to Install a compatible database like POSTGRE SQL.
6. Run the Mendix Docker Image using the cmd

docker run -it \
  -e ADMIN_PASSWORD=Password1! \
  -e DATABASE_ENDPOINT=postgres://username:password@host:port/mendix \
  mendix/mendix-buildpack:v1.2

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

VPC is opted whenever the business requires isolation level or higher data. It requires separate network segment and complete hardware as it is completely decoupled from the public mendix developer portal.

In VPC, the infrastructure has network, storage, and/or computing allocated to a customer. Accessible only when connected with customer’s network.

To automate deployment in VPC, the mendix developer portal provides APIs to configure tools like Jenkins, Microsoft Visual Team services, GitLab-CI, and Bamboo.

Combined with VPC and mendix platform, one click deployment can be maintained.

For example: CI/CD can be supported in Mendix developer portal through API’s. The API integrates the external tools using Jerkins, visual studio team services along with container technologies like Cloud Foundry, Docker with testing services like ATS (Application Test Suite) and Selenium

This enables the code revisions daily or whenever required on acceptance and test environment into production.

It enables DevOps and microservices and its automation and standardization reduce risk and cost.

Private Cloud – On-Premises

On-Premises is opted when the organization follow specific regulations and it is restricted to run in a third-party cloud.

It can run on both server-based solutions as IaaS or PaaS or physical server.

It is selected based on speed, self-service and governance, PaaS is more beneficial. It has two-node Kubernetes cluster.

It allows to run on multiple mendix applications with high availability (on test, acceptance and production environments). Also it has auto-scaling and auto-healing capabilities.

Mendix can be made run on traditional servers as the same way will lead to increase in setup time and maintenance.

Ref link :  https://www.mendix.com/evaluation-guide/app-capabilities/cloud-providers#which-cloud

Core difference between Mendix cloud, Private and On-Premises Clouds

Public Cloud	Private Cloud	On-Premises Cloud
The Mendix platform provides and operates an infrastructure called Mendix cloud, which is completely automated and optimized.	Mendix uses Cloud Foundry as deployment platform and the mendix applications can be deployed using private clouds like SAP Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure or Pivotal Cloud Foundry.	It will be locally installed within the company’s infrastructure of the Mendix runtime.
Other than standard security, mendix cloud provides additional security with predefined services for the customer requirements.	The Security measures depends, security provided within the private cloud chosen.	The security measures and controls depends, within the own organization’s private infrastructure.