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Serve

Codezero’s Serve function allows developers to run a service locally while making it appear as if it’s deployed in the Kubernetes cluster. When you serve a local variant, you can:

  • Route specific traffic to your local service instance while keeping cluster traffic undisturbed
  • Test changes without deploying to the cluster
  • Share your local variant with team members through the service catalog

Variants​

A Variant in Codezero represents an alternative instance of a service that can run alongside the default in-cluster version. Unlike traditional versioning, variants allow developers to test changes without deployment while allowing the original service to function undisturbed.

Traffic Management​

Collaboration Features​

  • Team members can see available variants in the service catalog
  • Developers can choose between original services or colleague’s variants
  • Multiple developers can work on different variants of the same service simultaneously

Benefits of Codezero's Serve​

Serving variants enables developers to test changes in a production-like environment without deployment overhead, facilitating faster development cycles and reducing the complexity of microservice development.

This implementation allows developers to:

  • Test local changes against real cluster services without deployment overhead
  • Route specific traffic to their local instance while keeping cluster traffic undisturbed
  • Create multiple simultaneous variants that can be selectively accessed based on user ID or custom headers
  • Collaborate with team members who can see and use available service variants through the Service Catalog

The architecture leverages Kubernetes' extensibility through Custom Resource Definitions while providing a seamless developer experience that bridges local development with cluster environments

Details (a.k.a What's Happening Under the Hood)​

When you serve a local variant, the Codezero Space Agent creates a Serve Kubernetes Custom Resource.

Based on the values in the Serve Custom Resource, the Codezero Operator performs the following tasks:

  1. It creates a new Codezero Router Deployment and changes the selector of the Service in the cluster to the new Router deployment.
  2. It creates a new Service with the old selector values which is used to forward requests to the in-cluster service.
  3. It restarts the Service Deployment to interrupt any long-running connections that may be open.

The Router either forwards requests to the in-cluster service or local variants via the Space Agent.

Serve Details

When no Local Variant is served for a particular service, the Space Agent deletes the Serve Custom Resource. The Operator deletes the Codezero Router Deployment and restores the selector of the Service to the original value.

You can read about more in-depth configuration options for the Router in Advanced Configuration Options for Space Agent.