The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) is an open-source software foundation based within the Linux Foundation that comprises well-known companies such as Google, IBM, Intel, Box, Cisco, and VMware, among others, and is devoted to making cloud-native computing ubiquitous and sustainable.
Cloud-native technologies enable businesses to design and deploy scalable applications in contemporary, dynamic settings including public, private, and hybrid clouds. This approach is exemplified by containers, service meshes, microservices, immutable infrastructure, and declarative APIs.
In this blog we are going to cover:
- What is Cloud Native
- Cloud Native Architecture
- Advantages of Cloud Native Architecture
- Cloud Native Architecture’s Challenges
- Cloud Native Tools
- Conclusion
What is Cloud-Native
Cloud-native is a method of developing apps as microservices and executing them on containerized and dynamically managed platforms that fully utilises the cloud computing model’s benefits. Cloud-native refers to how apps are developed and delivered rather than where they are deployed. Organizations may use these technologies to create and run scalable applications in modern, dynamic settings including public, private, and hybrid clouds. To achieve dependability and faster time to market, these applications are created from the ground up, designed as loosely connected systems, optimised for cloud scalability and performance, employ managed services, and take use of continuous delivery. Overall, the goal is to increase speed, scalability, and, ultimately, profit.
It’s all about speed and agility when it comes to cloud-native. Business systems are transforming from enablers of company capabilities to strategic transformation weapons that boost business velocity and growth. It’s critical to get innovative ideas to market as soon as possible.
Simultaneously, corporate systems have gotten more complicated, with users wanting more. They want quick responses, cutting-edge features, and no downtime. Problems with performance, recurrent mistakes, and inability to move quickly are no longer acceptable. Your users will go to your competitor’s website. Cloud-native systems are built to handle fast change, scalability, and resiliency.
Cloud Native Architecture
Cloud native architecture is a design methodology that uses cloud services like EC2, S3, Lambda from AWS, and others to enable dynamic and agile application development techniques that use a suite of cloud-based microservices rather than a monolithic application infrastructure to build, run, and update software.
Microservices and containerization help cloud native apps be more agile and dynamic by allowing them to move across cloud providers or deploy services independently in multiple languages or frameworks without causing conflict or downtime.
Because DevOps teams may work independently on multiple components of an application at the same time or introduce new features without losing stability, including a microservices architecture into application development promotes cooperation, efficiency, and productivity.
Source: OCI
Advantages of Cloud Native Architecture
Cloud-native architecture appeals to enterprises that embrace a DevOps mentality because of its fluidity, robustness, and scalability. A cloud native strategy has a number of advantages, including the following:
1) Using loosely connected services instead of an enterprise tech stack allows development teams to select the framework, language, or system that best suits an organization’s or project’s individual goals.
2) Containerized microservices’ mobility means that a business isn’t unduly reliant on a single cloud provider.
3) Because an open source container orchestration technology like Kubernetes makes it easy to identify the container with an issue without deconstructing the entire programme, debugging is simplified.
4) Because microservices are self-contained, developers may optimise them based on essential functionality, enhancing the end-user experience.
5) Microservices in software development promote continuous integration and continuous delivery efforts, shortening the development lifecycle and lowering the chance of human mistake through automated procedures.
6)To improve efficiency, a container orchestrator may automatically plan and assign resources based on demand.
7) Developers can make changes to one microservice or add new functionality without affecting the entire programme or its availability when using microservices for application design.
Cloud Native Architecture’s Challenges
Despite its numerous advantages, the combination of microservices with cloud infrastructure may not be suitable for all businesses. When deciding on the best plan for your team, keep the following obstacles in mind:
1) Teams may struggle to manage the dispersed workflow and responsibilities associated with microservices without a well-established DevOps pipeline.
2) If containers are scaled quickly, security issues might arise if they are not properly managed.
3) When migrating from a classic application to a microservices design, there might be a lot of interdependencies and concerns with functionality.
4) Some microservices need characteristics that are only available on specific machines, such as a Compute, GPU, or SSD, requiring a specific operating system or machine instance.
Cloud Native Tools
Companies that use the entire Cloud-native toolkit may frequently deliver more quickly, with less friction, and reduced development and maintenance expenses. A collection of cloud native utilities is provided below:
1. Microservices:
The idea of microservices is to separate our application into smaller sets and interconnected services rather than building one monolithic application. Each module supports a selected business goal and uses a simple and well-defined interface to communicate with other sets of services. Each microservice has its own database. Having a database per service is crucial if you wish to learn from microservices because it ensures loose coupling.
Learn more about Miroservices.
2. Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment:
Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) is an infrastructure component that automates the execution of tests (and, optionally, deployments) in response to version control events like pull requests and merges. Companies may use CI/CD to implement quality checks like unit tests, static analysis, and security analysis. Finally, CI/CD is a critical component of the cloud native ecosystem, since it may result in significant engineering savings and lower mistake rates.
Learn more about CI/CD
3. Containers:
Containers are a software package into a logical box with everything that the application needs to run. The software package includes an operating system, application code, runtime, system tools, system libraries, and binaries and etc.
Containers run directly within the Host machine kernels. They share the Host machine’s resources (like Memory, CPU, disks and etc.) and don’t need the extra load of a Hypervisor. This is the reason why Containers are “lightweight“. Containers are much smaller in size than a VM and that is why, they require less time start, and we can run many containers on the same compute capacity as a single VM. This helps in high server efficiencies and therefore reduces server and licensing costs.
Learn more about Containers
4. Container Orchestration:
Container Orchestration is used for managing, scheduling, scaling, storage and networking for individual containers. This can be used in any environment where we use the containers. Container Orchestration helps to deploy the same application across different environments without needing to re-design or re-configure it. Also, the microservices in containers make it easier to orchestrate services, including docker storage, security and networking. The most used container orchestration tool is Kubernetes.
Learn more about Container Orchestration
5. Logging:
The underlying component of observability is logging. Because logging is generally extremely known and accessible to teams, it’s a good place to start when introducing observability. Logs are necessary for deciphering what is going on in systems. Time series are more cost-effective to store than logs, hence cloud native systems prioritise them for analytics. However, logs are a crucial debugging tool, and certain systems can only be seen through them, therefore logging is required.
Learn more about Observability
6. Monitoring:
Important occurrences are saved as a time series in monitoring systems. Monitoring data is aggregated, which means you don’t have to keep track of every incident. This makes cloud native systems more cost-effective, and it’s crucial for knowing their current condition.
Learn more about Kubernetes Prometheus Monitoring
7. Alerting:
Alerting transforms logs and metrics into usable information, warns operators of system problems, and works well with time series data. Alerts can be used to warn teams when the number of HTTP 500 status codes or request length grows, for example. For cloud native systems, alerting is critical. Without alerts, you will not be alerted of mishaps, which in the worst-case scenario implies that firms will be unaware of any issues.
8. Tracing:
Cloud native technologies minimise the time and effort required to establish and scale services. As a result, teams are frequently launching more services than they were before to the cloud. Tracing allows teams to keep track of communication between services and to see a whole end-user transaction, including each stage. Teams can observe what service faults are occurring and how long each part of the transaction takes when performance issues develop. Tracing is a next-generation observation and debugging tool that may help teams debug issues more quickly, reducing downtime.
Recommended Technology: Jaeger
9. Service Mesh:
Service meshes are the Swiss army knife of cloud networking. They can provide dynamic routing, load balancing, service discovery, networking policies, and resiliency primitives such as circuit breakers, retries, and deadlines. Service meshes are an evolution in load balancing for cloud native architectures.
Recommended Technology: Istio
Conclusion
To migrate legacy applications into cloud native applications in the enterprise are not easy and it is a journey with many risks. Support for microservices and the main parts that encapsulate the characteristics of Cloud Native apps should aid in the transition to a Cloud-Native architecture with all of the security features built in.
While implementing Cloud Native apps may be exciting and help a firm become much more nimble, the advantages and difficulties of doing so should be carefully considered to ensure that the Cloud Native strategy is aligned with the business.
Related/References
- KCNA Certification Exam (Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate)
- Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate (KCNA): Step-by-Step Activity Guide (Hands-on Lab)
- GitOps: Everything You Need To Know
- Observability: Everything You Need To Know
- Containers for Beginners: What, Why and Types
- Kubernetes for Beginners – A Complete Beginners Guide
- Kubernetes Architecture | An Introduction to Kubernetes Components
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