Deployment UX
When a customer wants your software in their own cloud, someone on their side sets it up, usually a cloud admin. Deployment UX is everything that admin sees: initial setup, then the deployment's status, and removal when they leave.
- Level 1Integration effort 1 of 3
Send a link
Send your customer’s admin a link. They set up from your branded portal.
Good for your first customers, and setups you walk through on a call.
- Level 2Integration effort 2 of 3
Launch from your product
A Deploy button in your product opens the portal. Your product shows the status.
Good for customers who start on their own.
- Level 3Integration effort 3 of 3
Build it into your product
Your own setup screen and status. The admin never leaves your product.
Good for a setup that feels fully native.
Every level sets up the same deployment. Start with a link and move up later: nothing changes in Alien.
What the admin does
The admin acts once, at the start. After that, Alien runs the deployment without them:
- Initial setup runs once, by the customer's admin, with their own cloud credentials. It creates the management identity, a scoped identity Alien uses to manage the deployment, and the frozen resources, such as the bucket that holds the customer's data.
- Ongoing management is everything after. Alien rolls out releases, keeps live resources current, and reports status, without the admin.
Your Deployment UX starts the initial setup, then shows what ongoing management reports. How Alien works explains the split.
Architecture diagram. Left: Your side containing Alien, Releases, Setup links, Status and logs. Right: customer-1's cloud containing Initial setup, Management identity, Frozen resources; Your deployment, Live resources, Workloads.
Before you start
A new deployment runs the release that the production channel points to. Publish one first:
alien releaseEach release also builds the setup packages the admin runs: a CloudFormation template, Terraform module, Helm chart, or CLI command. Which ones depend on the platform: see AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, Kubernetes, Linux servers, and Setup packages.
Keys and AI models
Your customer's admin connects a key or a model account the same way: through a setup link or a settings page in your product. See Customer-managed keys and Local AI models.