by What is Cloud Native?
It refers to applications that are designed and developed to operate in cloud computing environments such as Docker and Kubernetes. These applications utilize cloud-specific features such as horizontally scalable microservices and stateless application architecture.
Microservices Architecture
A micro services architecture divides applications into independently deployable components called services. Each service runs in its own processes and communicates through APIs. This allows developing, deploying and scaling Cloud Native Software independently without impacting other parts of the application. Microservices improve modularity, scalability and flexibility compared to traditional monolithic architectures.
Containerization with Docker
Docker uses operating-system-level virtualization to package applications with all their dependencies into lightweight, portable containers. Docker containers provide isolation of environments while sharing resources of the host machine. They allow applications to be packaged and run consistently across environments – development, testing, staging and production. This provides deployment consistency and portability.
Orchestration with Kubernetes
Kubernetes is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling and management of containerized applications. It provides critical functions like service discovery, load balancing, automated rollouts and rollbacks, self-healing, secret and configuration management. Kubernetes abstracts the underlying infrastructure and allows deploying containerized microservices across independent machines without requiring changes to applications or APIs.
12 Factor App Methodology
The 12 factor app methodology is a guideline for developing cloud native applications. It recommends practices like storing config in environment variables instead of code, backing services with declarative formats like JSON or YAML, and idempotent processes that do not depend on local state or external systems. Implementing 12 factors results in applications that are more scalable, resilient and easier to deploy across dynamic cloud environments.
Benefits of Applications
Its applications provide many advantages compared to traditional monolithic applications:
Scalability
Cloud Native Software apps are designed to take advantage of elastic compute resources provided by clouds. Services can be horizontally scaled independently by increasing container instances as load increases. This provides scaled-out capacity to match workload demands.
Availability
By having stateless microservices and using principles like self-healing, cloud native apps can recover from failures quickly. Failed containers are automatically replaced and load balanced across remaining resources. This provides high availability without downtime.
Agility
The modular microservices architecture and automation tools like Kubernetes allow services to be independently developed, tested, deployed and updated without disrupting other parts. This accelerates delivery of new features.
Cost Optimization
Cloud resources are dynamically allocated based on demand. Services can be scaled up or down independently based on workload without incurring unnecessary costs. This provides optimized costs by paying only for resources utilized.
Portability
Applications packaged as containers are portable across environments. This allows development, testing and operations to use the same deployment packages across teams. The infrastructure is abstracted which removes vendor lock-in.
Challenges of Developing Cloud Native Apps
While cloud native architectures provide many benefits, they also introduce challenges that developers must address:
Service Management Complexity
With a distributed microservices architecture, each service now needs to be independently developed, deployed and managed. This increases operational overhead for monitoring and troubleshooting issues.
Deployment Complexity
Automated deployments require continuous integration/delivery pipelines and deployment configuration. Initial setup and maintenance of tools like Kubernetes is complex.
Skills Gap
Developing cloud native applications requires new skills like Docker, Kubernetes, microservices architecture, API design, and cloud infrastructure as code. Transitioning existing teams requires learning curves.
Network Partitioning
When a network or systems fail, services can become isolated. This leads to network partitioning where services are unaware of failed connections. Mechanisms to handle partition tolerance are needed.
Data Consistency
With services communicating asynchronously through APIs and data stored across services and databases, maintaining data consistency and integrity becomes challenging. Transactions need to be distributed.
Security
Exposing microservices through APIs and dynamic infrastructure provisioning expands the attack surface. Obfuscated service endpoints, mutual TLS authentication and authorization policies need enforcing.
Performance and Behavior
Granular services make performance optimizations and service level agreements trickier. Observability tools are necessary to monitor behavior and identify bottlenecks.
this article discussed key aspects of building its applications including microservices architecture, containerization, orchestration and 12 factor methodology. While it provides significant advantages, developers must address challenges around operational complexity, skills requirement and managing cross-service dependencies as organizations adopt its approaches. Overall, the approach aligns software development with dynamic cloud infrastructure for deploying modern applications.
*Note:
1. Source: Coherent Market Insights, Public Source, Desk Research
2. We have leveraged AI tools to mine information and compile it.
