With technical advancements the application development and management has moved to the cloud infrastructure. And now this is the era of the advanced cloud-native apps with more and more container adoption. Kubernetes, aka K8s, is the orchestration framework of those containers.
Leveraging the competitive advantages of multiple application development methodologies, Cloud Native Computing, the new buzz word is taking the IT industry by storms. The umbrella technology for all the tools and techniques for application developers, Cloud Native Computing has emerged as the first choice for all the professionals.
The new technology and its container orchestration with Kubernetes need more elaboration, and surveying its landscape the pros and cons needs to be weighed as well. So we have come up with a complete informational article for your perusal.
Let’s delve into the details!
What is Cloud Native Computing?
When one asks the professionals in the domain, one is sure to get a potpourri of replies! To clarify the concept and get exposure let’s start with a simplistic definition.
Cloud native computing is an approach to design, code, and operate the applications workloads being built in the cloud while enjoying the complete vantage of cloud model.
Next comes the official definition by Cloud Native Computing Foundation which can be explained in other words as:
Cloud Native Computing enables the organizations to develop and run the highly scalable applications across multiple dynamic environments and clouds. This approach is exemplified by containers, service meshes, immutable infrastructures, and declarative APIs.
These techniques, in unison, empower the loosely coupled systems and the robust automation enables the developers make high impact changes easily and frequently with minimum labour.
In this ultra-dynamic era, users are highly demanding and as a result business systems are getting more and more complex with each passing day. To keep up the pace with, they are required to enhance the capabilities for the strategic transformation. Speeding the business growth, rapid responsiveness, creative features, getting new ideas with the least TTM and zero downtime are the major desideratum.
And cloud native computing is all about this speed, agility, and the resilience!
How cloud native computing is different from cloud computing?
Though often confused, there is a humungous different in both aspects.
Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of the digital infrastructure like servers, data storage, databases, and application services over internet. In general, they are offered by a cloud platform like AWS, MS-Azure, Google Cloud with a price only for what you use.
On the other hand, cloud native is the architecture for assembling all aforementioned cloud components in the most optimized manner for the cloud environment. It is about the services- not the servers involved, as in the cloud computing.
Pillars of Cloud Native Computing
Precisely there are six main pillars of Cloud-Native Technology
1. Cloud Infrastructure
2. Modern Designs
3. Micro Services
4. Containers- Kubernetes & Kubernetes Dockers
5. Backing Services
6. Automation
Cloud Native Landscape
In Cloud-native, there are four important layers to comprehend:
1. Development Layer
The first layer of the stack, also known as the app definition layer, is about the developer tools required in building application database, related systems and CI/CD pipelines.
2. Provisioning Layer
The next layer is about the associated things which are required to develop the app and secure the environment where the app is deliberated to be deployed. This generally involves assuming infrastructure as a code, automating development, and addressing the security threats with vulnerability scans.
3. Runtime Layer
The third layer has to do with all the things required in running a cloud native application. Container runtimes, dockers, storage, networking and many more comes in purview of this layer.
4. Orchestration and Management Layer
In the last layer all the tools required to deploy, manage, scale, orchestrate and schedule the containerized application are brought together.
To get a better glimpse of the landscape, Cloud Native Computing Foundation has developed a highly interactive and amazingly interesting graphic of the ecosystem.
This can be accessed by clicking here!
Leading Edges of Cloud Native Technology
The technology or even the application being developed with it has major advantages. Considerable ones include:
1. Code Script Flexibility
In the on-premise technologies, the codes are written in conventional languages while the cloud-native apps are mostly written in web-friendly languages. The flexibility of working with any scripts is better for the enterprises as it can help them get exceptional talents for any development task.
2. Easy Updates
Using the ‘waterfall methodology’ the on-premise apps are updated once in a year or even biannually. This is also for the reason for the hardships being faced in the updates. While the cloud-native allows one to easily update the highly available and resilient apps with the utmost ease. This advantage boosts the productivity and creativity of the developers and helps them add more features- more frequently.
3. Multitenant Model
Other major productivity boost to the developer teams is the multitenancy support in the cloud native model. The apps seamlessly perform within the virtualized space and easily share the resources with other apps as well.
4. Demand-Consumption Flexibility
Where the on-premise apps requires additional infrastructure provisioning to scale operations effectively, the cloud native apps alters the consumption as per the demands. This also translates into the cost-effectiveness as the cloud model asks to pay what you have consumed.
5. Automation
Cloud Native Technology paves path to more robust automation. This allows developers to code once and then focus the attention to other tasks, the rest will be managed by the automation tools.
6. Data Carrying between different sessions
Cloud native applications do not carry data from one session to the other. This translates into easier scalability among different servers, easy cache for boosted performance, use lesser storage, and avoid vendor-lock-in.
Challenges Associated
Shifting the on-premise applications to the cloud-native environment without making changes in the architecture might prove to be a blunder! But making those changes is also an engineering challenge in itself.
The organizations going to cloud native model encounter the following main problems:
- Finding the right skill mix
- Cloud-Centric Security Model
- Management of changing cost profile
In a Nutshell
Finding the most optimized solution to the aforementioned glitches, the developers and the organizations must try to embrace the cloud native environment- the future of the IT technologies.
Either this can be made possible by developing new apps for supporting the cloud environment or by dissolving the large applications into the micro-services, which are better suited to the environment.
The advanced agile development principles supported by the cloud native environment not only saves time and efforts but also enhances the cost-effectiveness. The related managed containerization services are offered by AWS Kubernetes and Azure Kubernetes.
The advanced automation features and flexibilities associated will help the organizations easily outsmart and outperform the competition- paving the path for an overarching amelioration!