Update 2020: Zeit has rebranded to Vercel. The
nowcommand andzeit.coURLs referenced below correspond to the platform’s state in 2019.
Let me introduce you to this amazing service called zeit.co AKA ZEIT NOW.
I currently use it with another free online service called MicroBadger, a service I use to trigger custom Docker builds after a base image such as alpine has been updated.
This allows all my personal projects to be on the latest base image, potentially improving performance and security.
The Microservice sends a POST request to a function hosted on ZEIT NOW, and that function runs a bunch of tasks: invoking new builds of personal projects that depend on that image, grabbing changelists, and sending all that information to Slack.
I won’t show you how to do that, but I’ll show you how to get started with a full CI/CD pipeline.
ZEIT NOW is self-described as a All-in-one: Static and JAMstack deployment, Serverless Functions, and Global CDN.
In this post, I will be focusing on the serverless functions aspect as it is the most unique offering I know of. Serverless functions are not new. AWS Lambda has been doing it for a few years now, but the utility of Zeit NOW for me is derived from the fact that I did not have to enter any credit card information to get started.
Let’s go over the main limits of the (Hobby) free-tier:
| 2020-01-01 | Hobby | Pro | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deployments (per day) | 100 | 2000 | Custom |
| Serverless Functions per Deployment | 12 | 24 | Custom |
| Serverless Functions per Month | 160 | 640 | Custom |
| Serverless Function Duration (Seconds) | 10 | 60 | 900 |
| Deployments created from CLI per week | 2000 | 2000 | Custom |
| Team members per Team | - | 10 | Custom |
But let’s also remember the fair-use policy:
| Examples of Fair Use | Never Fair Use |
|---|---|
| Jamstack sites and apps | Proxies and VPNs |
| Frontends | Media hosting for hot-linking |
| SPAs | Scrapers |
| Functions that query DBs or APIs | Crypto Mining |
| Blogs, e-commerce, marketing | CPU-intensive APIs (e.g.: Machine Learning) |
Let’s get started, install the zeit/now-cli.
Clone/Fork my repository containing the example codebase sgama/demo-zeit-now.
Import this project through the ZEIT web portal.
Login to the now cli:
now login- Run and deploy with the CLI:
/demo-zeit-now$ now
Now CLI 18.0.0
? Set up and deploy “/mnt/c/Vcs/demo-zeit-now”? [Y/n] y
? Which scope do you want to deploy to? MyUser
? Link to existing project? [y/N] n
? What’s your project’s name? demo-zeit-now
? In which directory is your code located? ./
�🔗 Linked to myuser/demo-zeit-now (created .no
�🔍 Inspect: https://zeit.co/myuser/demo-zeit-now/abc12cdef [1s]
✅ Production: https://demo-zeit-now.now.sh [19s]
�📝 Deployed to production. Run `now --prod` to overwrite later (https://zeit.ink/1A).
�💡 To change the domain or build command, go to https://zeit.co/myuser/demo-zeit-now/settings- You should see your deployment at https://zeit.co/dashboard
- Add the following to your repository’s secrets for CI/CD here:
https://github.com/$YOUR_USER/$YOUR_REPO/settings/secrets
| ORG_ID | jq -r '.orgId' .now/project.json |
|---|---|
| PROJECT_ID | jq -r '.projectId' .now/project.json |
| ZEIT_TOKEN | Get one from https://zeit.co/account/tokens |
Uncomment the contents of
.github/workflows/main.ymlPush your code and view the CI/CD pipeline run:
https://github.com/$YOUR_USER/$YOUR_REPO/actions
Now you can visit the following URLs:
https:/$YOUR_REPO.now.sh/src/nodejshttps:/$YOUR_REPO.now.sh/src/python
I’ll let you figure the rest out, but with this repo, you will have a fully integrated continuous integration and continuous delivery system deploying functions for free.
