Author: Wu Xingling
As the cloud computing industry matures, cloud native changes the traditional development mode and speeds up the development and operation efficiency of program applications. More and more industries are based on cloud native and implement applications through open technical standards to fully release the value of the cloud era. According to IDC statistics, cloud native applications will account for 80% in 2023.
Today, more and more developers are jumping on the cloud native development bandwagon: according to the Cloud Native Development Status Report, there are 6.8 million cloud native developers worldwide, and the number of cloud native developers worldwide is growing at a rapid rate compared to the 4.7 million reported in May 2020.
In this context, Ali Cloud will upgrade the middleware Performance Challenge held for 5 consecutive years based on Tianchi platform to cloud native Programming Challenge, providing a stage for global developers to solve world-class problems. The cloud Native Combat Summit and the 2nd Cloud Native Programming Challenge Final award ceremony was successfully concluded in Shanghai on January 11th.
Looking back at 2021, what are the major breakthroughs in cloud native technology? In the era of cloud native development mode, technical standards and other changes, how should enterprises implement cloud native? What skills should developers have?
To this end, CSDN interviewed Ding Yu, general manager of Aliyun Cloud Original Application Platform, during the Cloud native Combat Summit, and asked him to interpret the product matrix, latest practices and breakthroughs of Aliyun in the field of cloud native in detail, and discuss the future development trend, in order to help developers and enterprises clarify their thinking.
Ding Yu, General manager of Aliyun Native Application Platform
Review the development and change of cloud native technology in 2021
Today, cloud native is poised for the next decade of cloud computing with a strong momentum of development. In January, Red Hat plans to acquire container and Kubernetes native security company StackROX, which plans to combine its capabilities with Red Hat OpenShift. In December, GitLab acquired Opstrace to expand its DevOps platform; HashiCorp, a provider of cloud infrastructure automation services, went public, becoming the world’s most valuable open source company.
In terms of technology, the popularity of key cloud native technologies such as containers, microservices and service grids continues to rise. According to the “China Cloud Native User Survey Report” by cloud Native Industry Alliance, the construction investment and cluster scale in the field of cloud native technology continue to rise in 2021, and user applications and software are released more frequently. In the user production environment, the adoption rate of container technology is nearly 70%, and Serverless technology continues to heat up, with nearly 40% of the application users.
A review of cloud native technology in 2021 shows the following development trends:
One, containers are everywhere. Containers can shield differences in heterogeneous environments, build application-centered multi-environment management interfaces, and manage IaaS infrastructure so that application software can be exported, o&M, and delivered in heterogeneous environments. We support various tasks, undertake services such as big data, database, AI, and middleware, and enhance capabilities such as storage and computing separation, mixed deployment, and o&M automation. Container breaks the boundary of cloud, and enables cloud capabilities to be greatly extended, gradually evolving into “cloud native operating system”, showing the development trend of “computing without boundaries, bearing infinite”.
Serverless continues to evolve. According to SlashData’s Cloud Native Development Status Report, 4.6 million developers use container orchestration tools, 4 million use Serverless, and 1.8 million use both. Knative will be released in 2021 to improve the end-to-end use experience and ease of use of Serverless container application delivery, and become the Serverless widely installed on Kubernetes. Nowadays, many enterprise services are fully Serverless, so developers do not need to pay attention to general operations such as operation and maintenance, and can focus more on the research and development of core business.
Open source core technology of application layer. Under the trend of open source devouring software, there will be more and more cloud native open source projects in the application layer. Open source is oriented to the broadest developer group, establishing technical standards and ecology, attracting more people to use open source technology and forming a good development trend.
4. Coordinated optimization of software and hardware. Computing, networking, and storage are further optimized through high-density, high-frequency scenarios of containers. For example, Ali Cloud releases more performance dividends through container + DpCA bare metal, RDMA joint optimization and other hardware and software coordination schemes.
It can be seen that a new computing architecture with cloud as the core is taking shape, which evolves from three levels: in the infrastructure layer, the cloud defines hardware, self-developed chips, servers, operating systems and other underlying technologies, and builds a hardware system with cloud as the core; Core software is reconfigured based on the cloud, and the open source community becomes the innovation center. Meanwhile, new development methods such as low code are promoted to make the cloud easier to use. At the application layer, with the development of 5G networks, computing and data will accelerate the migration to the cloud, giving birth to new species such as cloud computers, meta-universes and autonomous driving.
Thinking and change of technology companies under the tide of cloud origin
We live in an era where everyone is a developer and everyone is a technology company. As technology changes, so does the demand for technology. How can tech companies better value their technology as the cloud native wave arrives?
Take Alibaba as an example. As the earliest company in China to deploy cloud native technology on a large scale, Alibaba has started cloud native practice since it independently developed Internet middleware in 2006. In 2011, Alibaba deployed containerized infrastructure at the group scale, pioneering the large-scale application of cloud native technology by Chinese technology enterprises. In 2015, containers and middleware were productized and cloud native technology was fully commercialized. In 2019, 100% of Alibaba’s core system went online and millions of containers supported the Double 11. In 2020, Alibaba’s core application system will be fully cloud biogenics; In 2021, Ali Cloud will fully enter the cloud native era.
As the technical base for millions of customers in the era of cloud native, Ali Cloud has a rich family of cloud native products, covering the full stack technology capabilities of underlying infrastructure, data intelligence, distributed applications and so on. It serves more than 80% of Chinese technology enterprises, covering the needs of 197 different industry scenarios.
This year, Ali Cloud released a number of technology and product upgrades in the cloud native field, such as Ali Cloud container services fully upgraded to ACK Anywhere, put forward the concept of All on Serverless, released the industry’s first cloud native technology CNStack, open source numerous cloud native projects.
In the container field, Ali Cloud has deployed the cloud native operating system with the container product family as the core, so that enterprises can obtain consistent container infrastructure capabilities wherever they need cloud. In September 2021, Ali Cloud container services were fully upgraded to ACK Anywhere.
ACK Anywhere supports the centralized management of central cloud, local cloud and edge cloud container clusters, and supports the unified management of customer self-built clusters and other cloud Kubernetes clusters. ACK Anywhere provides four core capabilities of consistent experience, elastic computing power, capacity sink and simplified DISASTER recovery, allowing enterprises to use containers for unified cluster management, unified resource scheduling, unified data disaster recovery and unified application delivery.
To better meet customers’ needs to deploy Kubernetes clusters in their data centers, AliYun has launched ACK Distro, a container service that provides enterprises with the same secure and reliable enterprise capabilities as ACK on their own infrastructure. ACK Distro is now available for download. At the same time, Ali Cloud released distributed cloud container platform ACK ONE, which is an enterprise-class multi-region/multi-cluster container management platform, which can help enterprises in any region, any infrastructure, any scenario to embrace the technology enabled by cloud native, and provide consistent management, delivery, operation and maintenance experience.
In Gartner’s latest global Container Public Cloud Competition Pattern report, Ali Cloud has been the only Chinese enterprise selected for three consecutive years. Its products cover Serverless container, service grid, security sandbox container, hybrid cloud and edge container, etc., and it is one of the service providers with the most complete coverage of key capabilities of global container products.
Nowadays Serverless has been widely adopted by more and more enterprises due to its flexible scalability and pay-per-quantity characteristics. In order to achieve full scenario coverage of Serverless, Ali Cloud proposed the concept of All on Serverless. Serverless application engine SAE allows developers to move to the cloud without changing the code regardless of which language they use, such as Go, PHP and Java. Enjoy full hosting, free operation and maintenance, extreme flexibility.
In 2018, Ali Cloud proposed the concept of “cloud native trinity”, which will form a unified technical system of “self-research technology”, “open source projects” and “commercial products”, and open to the outside world. Through the wide application of open source middleware such as Dubbo, RocketMQ, SpringCloud Alibaba, Nacos, Seata, Arthas, Sentinel, ChaosBlade, etc., promote the standard and ecological construction in the field of cloud native middleware to maximize the value of technology.
Now open source is playing a crucial role in the cloud native area, and cloud native open source projects have played a role in the full software life cycle. We observe that Ali Cloud has been adding cloud native open source code:
Cloud native combat summit in 2022, ali greetings native new a piece of open source map, ali cloud officially open source industry in the first application of live project AppActive, make disaster areas of cloud native new standards, and issued a white paper on “live application technology, to help enterprises to quickly build many application architecture; to protect business continuity and the enterprise core value.
The White Paper on Application of Live Technologies was released
In addition, Ali Cloud has also upgraded several key open source projects, such as Dubbo 3.0, which provides a complete set of solutions, migration paths and best practices to help enterprises achieve cloud native transformation; Nacos released milestone version 2.0, which abstracted the kernel hierarchically, extended the plug-in mechanism, and improved performance by a factor of 10. RocketMQ 5.0 upgrade of Ali Cloud messaging middleware, becoming a hyper-converged platform of message, event and flow; Launch OpenYurt cloud native/containerized edge computing solution; Release of a new version of KubeVela, which brings a new UI console to further simplify application delivery and management in a complex cloud native environment; The first major release of OpenKruise takes cloud native application automation to new heights.
Cloud native, the shortest path of enterprise digital innovation
Under the change of cloud native technology, Ding Yu put forward a point of view: “Cloud native is the shortest path of enterprise digital innovation.”
From the perspective of enterprise IT system demands, technology as a productive force can create greater technical value and lead the development of business. In the process of enterprise cloud, cloud native technology, as a representative of advanced productivity, brings rapid iteration of cloud business to enterprises and enhances enterprise competitiveness. Therefore, in the enterprise landing cloud native, can be divided into several steps:
First, cloud infrastructure and internet-based core technologies. The biggest advantage of the Internet is the small step fast run, fast iteration. There is a tenfold difference in project iteration between traditional IT architectures and Internet architectures. Traditional software research and development cycle is in years, and a large version may be released every year, while Internet software research and development cycle is in weeks or days. Through small-scale iteration, sensitive business can quickly accept the response and feedback of the market and seize market opportunities.
Second, business data and intelligent decision making. Manage the system application with data, carry out data-based calculation with big data and AI technology, and finally make decisions based on data trends. Data will fully release technical productivity and enable enterprises to achieve business breakthroughs by relying on technology, which will bring huge opportunities for digital innovation and transformation to enterprises.
In the specific practice process, Ali Cloud observed that some enterprises need a simple, low threshold, high integration, scenario-oriented development operation and maintenance integration platform to implement cloud native. Therefore, CNStack emerged as The Times require.
CNStack meets the demands of customers for offline high integration platform in various typical scenarios, so that enterprises can not be constrained by technology in digital transformation, focus on business itself, and accelerate enterprise digital innovation. At the same time, CNStack provides a large number of schemes, which are divided into four scenarios: for industrial applications, for saas-oriented software output, for edge management platform, and for community. There are also new scenarios planned in the future.
CNStack Community edition is now available for download
Take Nails as an example. Previously, it might take several weeks to deploy proprietary nails to heterogeneous IaaS. Now, CNStack can complete the nails in a few days, greatly improving the efficiency of delivery operation and maintenance, and becoming a sharp tool to improve productivity.
In the process of digital transformation, enterprises not only need to improve business efficiency, but also need to face various uncertainties. How to ensure the stability of business when business is growing rapidly?
The multi-active Dr Solution becomes an important choice for enterprises in the cloud era. As more and more enterprise services such as health codes become social infrastructure, business continuity and safe production become the lifeline of enterprises, and multi-activity DISASTER recovery has become a requirement that enterprises must consider, Ding said.
AppActive, the industry’s first application live project, is open source
Since 2013, Ali Cloud has implemented the remote live solution. Based on years of experience, it has formed the application-centered cloud native DISASTER recovery architecture MSHA to help different industries improve the ability of business application live. “This technology is not a silver bullet, IT’s not something that only companies need, IT’s something that companies should think about at the beginning of their IT architecture, and IT should become a common technology in the industry.” Ding Yu stressed.
How can developers get ahead in the era of all-cloud development?
According to statistics, in 2022, more than 75% of enterprises are using containers in their production environment. When enterprises build IT architectures, cloud is no longer an isolated platform of the third party, but a part of the enterprise IT architecture. Cloud native is revolutionizing the development model. Enterprises need to consider cloud operation and maintenance, cloud development, cloud iteration, cloud disaster recovery and other issues. Therefore, the era of all-cloud development has come, and developers and enterprises will usher in a golden age of technological dividends.
So how can developers adapt to these changes? Ding Yu said, because the cloud is fully compatible with the open source and ecological standards, so developers do not need to learn at the core of the technical agreement, technical framework, technical performance, technical standards, etc., and the need to upgrade personal skills and knowledge, to adapt to some of the work mode, such as how to do in the cloud operations on permissions management, asset management, cloud, etc.
Ding Yu suggested that cloud native open source projects have covered all aspects of the software development life cycle. Enterprises can pay attention to relevant open source products, fully understand the forms of different products in different scenarios, and make reasonable product selection according to industry evaluation. Business-centric enterprises can use the rich products provided by the cloud platform to complete the underlying technology construction, allowing them to focus more on the business.
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