Advanced Concepts

Runners

Runners are a construct in Simplifyd that represent a running instance of an app. A runner determines the amount of coumpute resources (CPU, RAM) availabe to an app.

Note

Runners are akin to EC2 instances in the AWS world.

Custom domains

Custom domains are a feature on Simplifyd that allow you specify your own custom URL for your web applications. It's easy to set one up. It requires that you make changes to your DNS settings. You would need to create a CNAME record for your custom domain pointing to an address that would be shown to you at the point you initiate adding a custom domain to your web application deployed on Simplifyd. A CNAME is the preferred way to add a custom domain as it is the most flexible and dynamic. But there are situations where is simply isn't possible especiially when the domain used is root record. In such situations using an A record is permitted and the IP address to point to would be shown during setup.

Here's an example. To point your DNS provider at the DNS target provided by Simplifyd. The DNS target is shown when you run the edge add domains <list of custom domains> command.

You usually configure a new CNAME record with your DNS provider to point it at Simplifyd. The following table shows common CNAME record patterns:

Record	Name	Target
CNAME	www	nga-west-1.simplifyd.app
CNAME	othersubdomain	nga-central-1.simplifyd.app
CNAME	anothersubdomain	ken-west-1.simplifyd.app

Simplifyd vanity URLs

Whenever you deploy a web applicaiton on Simplifyd, a vanity URL is created for your web application. This makes it very quick and easy to get going. But in the section above on custom domains, it is possible to add a custom domain instead to add some personalization.

Autodeploy

Simplifyd supports automatic deployments of applications. It works by detecting changes to your Git repo and automatically deploying your application once you push to Git. It's important to note that everytime an autodeploy happens a new build artifact is created. Autodeploy is enabled by default when you create an app. Autodeploy can be disabled in app settings.

Undeploy/unpublish app

Simplifyd allows you undeploy or unpublish a running application. You might do this if you are decommisioning or are done with testing an application. This operation removes and destroys, unrecoverably, all resources used by the application including any form of persistent storage. This is an irreversible process and should be well thought out before inittiating. You are only billed when your app is published and running. Unpublished apps do not incur any charges.

How billing works on Simplifyd

The following are billable services on Simplifyd: - Deployed apps - Data stores. For example, managed Postgres - Files stored in Simplifyd Blob (S3 compatible object storage)

Billing happens daily. Deductions are made from your wallet on Simplifyd. It's important that you ensure your Simplifyd wallet is adequately funded. Accounts that go into default due to inadequate funding are allowed a grace period of 3 days before all services are deactivated.

Rollbacks

Simplifyd allows for easy rollback of applications to previous states. This is achieved by storing artifacts of previous builds. A rollback restores an applicaiton to a previous state. Rollbacks make it seamless to undo unwanted changes.

Manual app updates

There are situations where it might be preferred to update apps manually instead of automatic deploys. To achieve this, autodeploy must be disabled under app settings.

Datastores in Simplifyd

Simplifyd supports fully managed Postgres, Redis and MongoDB deployments. Simplifyd Redis is memory only and doesn't support persisting to disk. This can be a problem if your app requires full disk persistence. Right now, all fully managed data stores can only be accessed privately through your apps and are not available over the internet. Another thing to note is that only apps in the same project as the data store can access the data store. Apps in other projects cannot access the data store.