Okesanya Odunayo Introducing mirrord, a tool designed to streamline developers' workflows. With mirrord, you can test your code in the cloud in seconds!
Introduction
Remember the long, tedious process of building an application, probably dockerizing it, then deploying to staging for testing, only to encounter bugs that are only realized in the cloud environment? These are the incidents that inevitably slow down the deployment process.
Well, what if you could catch those bugs before your code reaches the final testing stage and avoid occasionally breaking the staging server with failed tests?
The hero, mirrord, is here. Less troubles! mirrord enhances your development workflow by bringing the cloud environment closer to your local setup. This lets you test your code in the context of a cloud environment throughout the development process.
Yes, you heard it right. Mirrord is bringing the cloud environment to your local setup!
The Pain Points of Development Environments
When developing a Kubernetes application, the primary challenges usually stem from setting up a local Kubernetes environment and passing your code through a lengthy CI/CD pipeline, followed by waiting for the code to be deployed to the cloud before testing can commence.
To circumvent this frustrating delay and lengthy process, developers are often tempted to save cloud testing for the final stages of development. However, this approach piles up bugs and issues that need to be addressed later in the cloud. This scenario can be best avoided by testing in the cloud from the very beginning of development.
There are still more challenges developers face in their development workflow. Let's discuss these issues in more detail.
Hurdles of dockerization and deployment
Developers often need to dockerize their applications and go through a lengthy CI process before they can start testing in the cloud. These steps can be time-consuming and sometimes complex, diverting focus from actual development tasks. This shift in focus consumes valuable time that could be better spent on developing the application.
Discrepancy between the local and cloud environment
When you deploy your app to the cloud, it faces a different environment. It must handle real-time traffic, interact with external services, and work with new configurations. This can lead to unexpected bugs that may break the application and make the server unusable for a period of time.
Challenges with shared staging servers
In many development teams, a shared staging server is used for testing code before it goes live. When one developer's code causes the staging server to crash, it creates a bottleneck.
Other developers are forced to wait until the server is back up and running before they can continue their work. This not only slows down individual progress but also disrupts the entire team's workflow, leading to frustration and decreased productivity.
Debugging
Debugging in a cloud environment can be challenging. When you encounter a bug on the shared server, you have two options.
Bring a copy of the cloud environment down to your local environment to replicate the bug.
Start debugging on the remote server.
Let's consider how these options will serve us well in an environment of about 300 microservices.
The first option requires you to replicate over 300 services and manage their individual dependencies and configurations. Beside the technical difficulty, such a massive workload can fry your laptop. I don't think you would love to tick this option.
The second option lets you start debugging right away, but there's a downside. Your work can be disrupted when another developer's code breaks the server. Additionally, spending too much time on the shared server can slow down other developers who also need to test their code, causing delays for the entire team.
How Mirrord Saves the Day!
Mirrord provides solutions to the seemingly endless troubles developers face in their workflow. You can get your code running in your cloud environment with just a single button click.
It provides your code with everything it needs to operate like it's on the cloud—access to other applications, databases, configurations, and most importantly, real-time traffic.
Mirrord operates in the memory of your local process in your friendly environment and as an agent pod in the cloud. The agent pod duplicates incoming requests to the target pod (the cloud version of your code) and sends a copy to your local process. Your code interacts with this traffic, and you can take actions against the results —tweak, modify, and test your code again.
From your local IDE, your code operates like it's living in the staging server. However, the server still handles requests and sends out responses seamlessly. It doesn't even know you were there!
Core advantages of mirrord
Mirrord makes developers' lives easier. Let’s take a look at what you will enjoy from using mirrord.
Simplicity
mirrord makes things easy for developers by offering a straightforward setup process and user-friendly commands. With just a few steps, you can configure mirrord to integrate seamlessly into your development environment. Get started quickly with minimal effort.
Improved Productivity
mirrord abstracts away the need for frequent git pushes and the delays associated with CI/CD pipelines, reducing both the time and stress involved in the development process. Instead of waiting for code to be pushed, built, and deployed, you can focus directly on writing and testing your code.
Faster Deployment
With the cloud environment integrated into the developer’s workflow, and the complete elimination of containerization and zero stress of CI process, you now experience faster development workflow which equals faster time to market of applications.
Efficient debugging
No more reading logs to tackle remote bugs. With mirrord, you can replicate remote bugs directly in your local environment, allowing you to debug them more effectively. Debugging now becomes a seamless part of your development process.
Shift left on cloud testing
You no longer have to save cloud testing for the final step. Test your code in the cloud continuously as you develop for faster iterations and improvements. This allows you to catch and fix issues earlier in the development cycle, leading to higher quality code.
Saves the production-like environment
mirrord helps save the staging server. By allowing you to test your code on the staging server without actually deploying it, mirrord removes the experience of frequent disruptions and downtimes in the shared staging server.
Collaboration
mirrord makes team collaboration much easier. With the new feature, mirrord for teams, you can now mirror traffic from the same target pod. This means multiple team members can test their code against similar traffic at the same time, producing more consistent and reliable results
Unique features of mirrord
Easy to use plugins
Mirrord offers extra flexibility with its powerful plugins, which can be easily integrated into your local Integrated Development Environment (IDE). These plugins are designed to enhance your development experience by offering a range of functionalities that simplify your workflow. Begin testing with just a single click.
Regulate traffic flow
Mirrord lets you control how traffic is directed to your local service. You can choose to mirror traffic to the target pod and send a copy to your local process, or you can configure your local process to handle requests exclusively by stealing the traffic if you are confident in your code.
You can also streamline your testing by exposing your code to specific traffic using filters. These flexible options enable you to test your code under different configurations, ensuring that it performs well in the context of the cloud.
Granular configuration
mirrord offers flexible configurations for how your local process responds to traffic. For example, if both the target pod and your local process write to the database, it can result in duplicate data. You can configure your local process to write to the remote database or let the target pod handle it while your local process writes to a local instance of your database.
This level of control helps you tailor the development environment to your specific needs and manage how your local process accesses certain resources in your cluster.
Resource cleanup
Mirrord is quite efficient and reliable. It does a few things in the cluster to bring the remote functionalities to your cluster environment but unlike other development tools, it doesn't leave your cluster messy with stale pods or resources.
When you terminate a mirrord session, it properly cleans up its resources in your cluster, ensuring that no resources are left behind that could disrupt your environment or accidentally incur costs.
Customer centric
Facing a problem connecting your code to the cloud? No worries. Mirrord team is available to support you and assist in resolving any problems you may face. They provide assistance through various channels, including email, public Discord, support tickets, private Discord, Slack, or Teams.
You can also schedule a live demo. Mirrord team will guide you in fully utilizing the functionalities of mirrord within your organization and assist in resolving any issues you may encounter.
Additionally, Mirrord values user suggestions. If there is a feature you would like to see implemented, just let them know. They are absolutely committed to enhancing your development experience.
Conclusion
In summary, mirrord saves developers troubles in their development workflow by making it easier to test their code in a cloud environment from the comfort of their local IDE. This significantly saves time, improves developer productivity, and reduces the chances of bugs sneaking into the production-like environment.
On the business side, this tremendously improves the time-to-market of products. But it doesn't end there!
Don't forget, mirrord is every developer's hero, and collaboration is key to every business's success. You wouldn't want to limit this tremendous capability of mirrord to a single person on your team. Empower your team with a better and faster workflow and promote collaboration with the new feature - mirrord for teams, which recently launched on the 17th, June. Wondering what is so amazing about this new feature?
Mirrord for teams extends the capabilities of mirrord by providing additional functionalities such as concurrent use, enhanced security and deployment-level mirroring. Register here to get started.
You want to hear more hero stories of mirrord in action? Read the user stories to see how Mirrord helped them.
