Cloud Native is blueprint for building web scale applications on the cloud that are more available and scalable. It promises increased agility to ship new features quickly without compromising availability, making it quicker to respond to changing customer demands.
Similarly, Cloud computing in basic form means running applications on computing resources managed by cloud providers, without having to purchase and manage hardware ourselves. eg GCP, azure, AWS
Migrating an existing monolithic application from on-premise to the cloud is great start. It frees the team from managing hardware infrastructure. It is fast to provision new computing resources, and scaling up is effortless. However simply running an application in cloud does not make it cloud Native. For an application to make it cloud Native there are at least 4 pillars to consider.
The first pillar is application architecture. Cloud Native applications are made up of multiple small, interdependent services called microservices. Traditionally developer built a monolithic applications with single binary containing all required functionalities. It was difficult to develop, test and deploy monolithic application quickly. It was also challenging to scale a monolithic application. By using a cloud Native approach, developers break the functionalities of a large application into smaller microservices. These services are designed to be small, allowing team to take ownership of their own services and deploy and scale them independently on their own timeline. These microservices are loosely coupled. These communicate with each other with a well defined APIs. For eg an ecommerce application can be composed of the shopping cart service which talks to the payment service and the inventory service.
The second pillar is containers and container orchestration. Cloud Native applications are packaged in containers. Containers are light weight component that need everything needed to run a microservice in any environment. Container orchestration is an essential component for large cloud native applications. As a number of microservices grow, container orchestration manages the large number of containers so that all the microservices can run smoothly as a single unified application. A popular container orchestration platform is Kubernetes. It oversees and controls where container run, detects and repairs failure, and balances the load between microservices.
The third pillar is the development process. Cloud native applications are built using a microservices architecture. Different services are developed, deployed and scaled independently of each other. This requires high level of collaboration between development and Operation teams, as well as significant investment in automation for the development and deployment process. This is where DevOps comes into play. DevOps is a development practice that emphasizes collaboration, communication, and automation between development and Operation team to deliver could native application quickly and reliably. A critical component of DevOps is CI/CD. It enables team to automate the software development and deployment process, making it faster and more reliable. The continuous integration part of CI/CD refers to the practice of regularly merging code changes in a shared repository and running automated test to ensure that the code is running as expected. It also refers to the practice of automating the deployment of the software to production environments, often through the use of automated deployment pipelines.
The last pillar is the adoption of the cloud native Open standards. As the cloud native ecosystem matures, critical components becomes standardized and best practice become widely available. Being cloud native means leveraging these standardized components as building blocks and following these best practices as they become available. Some well known standards are Kubernetes, Distributed tracing is an essential component of observability. It tracks requests as they propagate through the maze of microservices eg well known projects are Jaeger, Zipkin and open telemetry. Service mesh is the core infrastructure layer of managing service to service communication between microservices. istio and linkered are some examples. By leveraging open standards, it frees developers from having to worry about common functionalities like logging, tracing and service discovery. This allows developers to focus on what matters, which is their own microservice applications.
When should we adopt Cloud native strategy?
Depends. If the application is small and relatively simple, a cloud native approach may not be necessary and a traditional monolithic architecture or a simpler deployment model may suffice. However, for larger and more complex applications, cloud native can offer a wide range of benefits, such as increased scalability, availability and faster deployment cycles. Ultimately a decision to adopt a cloud native strategy should be based on careful evaluation of the application requirements and the organization resources. Cloud native applications are more reliable, scalable and resilient in shorter period of time.
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Cloud-native refers to a set of practices, methodologies, and architectures designed to leverage the capabilities of cloud computing environments to build, deploy, and manage applications. Cloud-native approaches prioritize scalability, agility, resilience, and efficiency by taking advantage of cloud-native technologies and services. Here are some key characteristics and principles of cloud-native:
1. **Microservices Architecture**: Cloud-native applications are typically built using a microservices architecture, where the application is composed of loosely coupled, independently deployable services. Each service is responsible for a specific function and communicates with other services through well-defined APIs.
2. **Containerization**: Containers are used to package applications and their dependencies into lightweight, portable units that can run consistently across different environments. Technologies like Docker and container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes are commonly used for containerization in cloud-native environments.
3. **Elasticity and Scalability**: Cloud-native applications are designed to dynamically scale up or down in response to changes in workload or demand. They take advantage of cloud-native infrastructure services like auto-scaling and load balancing to optimize resource utilization and handle variable traffic patterns.
4. **DevOps and Automation**: Cloud-native development practices emphasize automation, continuous integration, and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines to streamline the software development lifecycle. DevOps principles are applied to foster collaboration between development and operations teams and enable rapid, iterative development and deployment of software.
5. **Resilience and Fault Tolerance**: Cloud-native applications are designed to be resilient to failures and faults. They leverage distributed architectures, redundancy, and fault-tolerant mechanisms to minimize downtime and ensure high availability.
6. **Infrastructure as Code (IaC)**: Cloud-native applications are provisioned and managed using infrastructure as code (IaC) tools and practices. Infrastructure configuration, provisioning, and management are codified and version-controlled, enabling consistent, repeatable deployments and infrastructure changes.
7. **Managed Services and Serverless Computing**: Cloud-native applications leverage cloud provider-managed services and serverless computing platforms to offload operational overhead and focus on application development. Managed databases, message queues, and serverless functions enable developers to build and deploy applications without managing underlying infrastructure.
8. **Observability and Monitoring**: Cloud-native applications incorporate robust observability and monitoring capabilities to gain insights into application performance, health, and behavior. Monitoring tools and platforms provide real-time visibility into application metrics, logs, and traces, enabling proactive troubleshooting and optimization.
In summary, cloud-native encompasses a set of practices, technologies, and methodologies that enable organizations to leverage the scalability, agility, and efficiency of cloud computing environments to build, deploy, and manage modern applications. By adopting cloud-native approaches, organizations can accelerate innovation, improve developer productivity, and deliver value to customers more effectively in today's dynamic and competitive business landscape.
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