Interviewer: Zhang Jun (You Ji)
With the continuous emergence of new technologies, enterprises will face many technical problems in the landing process of digital transformation. In this regard, Ali Cloud released the industry’s first cloud native technology medium product — Cloud native Stack (CNStack for short). How to understand the concept of cloud native technology in comparison with the concept of business center and data center that is often heard? How will it specifically help enterprises to solve the problem of enterprise digital transformation?
On November 24, InfoQ invited Zhang Jun, head of aliyunyun’s native PaaS team and senior technical expert, and you Ji, to share relevant questions. You Ji from the development of cloud native technology to talk about cloud native technology in Taiwan product planning and its landing practice cases.
You Ji led the design and construction of a large number of high-availability technology product systems of Ali Group and Ali Cloud. He is also the core creator of the basic technology to guarantee the stability of Double 11. At present, he is responsible for the construction of cloud native PaaS platform. The following is an excerpt from that day’s share, edited without changing InfoQ’s original meaning:
InfoQ: First of all, I’d like you ji to say hello and introduce himself.
You Ji: Hello, everyone. My name is Zhang Jun and my flower name is You Ji. I joined Alibaba in 2011. At that time, I was in charge of ali middleware and basic technologies related to high availability. Later, I was also in charge of Ali Cloud SRE team. The high availability technology I am responsible for is closely related to the stability of Double Eleven. Now I am mainly responsible for the construction of cloud native PaaS platform, which is to build a PaaS platform in the cloud native era based on cloud native technology.
\
Cloud native technology definition and development process * *
InfoQ: I would like you to give us an overview of the definition of cloud native and its development process. What is the current stage of cloud native in your opinion?
You Ji: Cloud native is actually a very popular word in recent years, but at the same time it has a very broad meaning. Since its inception, its definition and technical connotation have changed constantly. We use the Cloud Native Computing Foundation to make a standard definition for it.
Cloud native is actually a set of architectural methodologies and technologies. First, it has a prerequisite that our applications are built on the cloud, and then we build applications based on the cloud that are easy to manage, scalable, fault tolerant, and more loosely coupled.
Cloud native not only defines the state of the application being built, but also provides a set of technologies, such as the familiar containers, microservices, DevOps and Serverless, service grids, including declarative apis and immutable infrastructure. It not only provides a methodology and concept, but also provides a corresponding technology set. In this technical system, a landmark event of cloud native is the establishment of CNCF in 2015. CNCF has a standardized definition of cloud native, and it is a neutral organization that undertakes the promotion of cloud native. CNCF also provides the set of technologies just mentioned, on top of which provides the whole cloud native Landscape, including the corresponding technologies, tools and platforms, to build operational, managed, scalable and fault-tolerant business applications. At the same time, these business applications can run in different environments such as public cloud, private cloud and hybrid cloud. This is the definition and current development form of cloud native.
From the birth of cloud native to the establishment of CNCF, the whole cloud native technology began to develop rapidly. At present, both in the community and in the enterprise, cloud native has been rapidly implemented.
InfoQ: What are the benefits of cloud native technologies at this stage for the enterprise? What challenges do they pose?
You Ji: The benefits are obvious.
First, cloud native encapsulates the complexity of the entire infrastructure downward. Based on K8s and containers, it has lost sight of the complexity of the underlying infrastructure and is able to mask the differences of the underlying architecture. Today, K8s and containers have become the new interface for infrastructure on top of cloud native architectures and foundations.
Second, cloud native pairs can support multiple workloads and distributed architectures, so that both our business applications and other devices can be unified hosted using cloud native technology. At the same time, it has the natural distributed ability and micro-service ability, which can make the best use of the cloud’s ability, such as elasticity, disaster tolerance and stability, to maximize the advantages of the cloud, which is its advantage.
However, cloud native also presents some challenges for enterprise landing. First, I don’t know if you have seen the Landscape of CNCF. It is a very complex technology map with many technical components. The concept is good, but it is not very good to use it, which means that good ideas may not really bring good value transformation. Because there are too many technologies, but do not know how to use it well, what is the best practice, in fact, there is no standard opinion.
Second, there is a lack of unified planning and integrated programmes. A lot of companies that are using cloud native technologies are actually using them in a componentized way, using K8s, containers, microservices, DevOps, or Service Mesh, but they’re actually using them in a componentized way.
In the case of componentized application, in fact, the technology is relatively fragmented, without an integrated scheme, the efficiency will be relatively low. At the same time, componentized application brings another problem, that is, components themselves are complicated. Although primary scenarios, the clouds blocked the complexity of the applications and infrastructure, but open the cloud native technology, by using the modular way, that in itself also has the operational costs, and it also is very rich, the components of the ecological under the pressure of operating cost, also can bring a series of problems stability, usability, this is some of the challenges for cloud native technology.
\
How to understand cloud native technology in Taiwan * *
InfoQ: In the past Cloud computing conference, Ali Cloud released the industry’s first cloud native medium platform product CNStack. We often talk about data and business medium platform, but what about cloud native medium platform? How is it different from the central platform we mentioned earlier?
Swim ji: in fact in Taiwan is an iron triangle, up is the data in Taiwan, business in Taiwan, down the most below is the technology in Taiwan, just the concept of technology in Taiwan, its scope is wider, so there is rarely a definition of the entity in Taiwan.
When it comes to China Central Platform, you can easily think of a story, namely Supercell, a Finnish mobile game company. This story is also the birth of China Central Platform, which is often told in our industry. When Teacher Ma visited Supercell, he found that the game company’s game iteration was very fast, and he could make a new game in a short time. Then, when he found that the new game market was not good, he could immediately give up and quickly start informatization.
In fact, these are relying on the precipitation of the backing and the existence of the ability to rely on the ability to make the front end of the business can be better and faster to run, this is in Taiwan.
For Taiwan, in fact, today’s data center, business center in the industry have some good landing, especially in Taiwan product landing do better. But for the technical medium, the past lack of some platform-type products or precipitation, so I think the technical medium must pay attention to the scene, do not speak of the scene, it involves too wide. Today, cloud native provides a scenario where, as we mentioned earlier, cloud native defines its technology category, such as K8s, containers, microservices, DevOps, Serverless, service grid, etc. Under cloud native, the concept of technology middle stage is possible and relatively focused. Therefore, CNStack is actually an extension of THE technology platform, which is a specific platform-type implementation of the technology platform under the current cloud native scene.
InfoQ: Why the cloud native mid-stage at this point? What is the opportunity behind it?
You Ji: Alibaba actually has two attributes. First, it is an Internet company with tmall, Taobao, Alipay and Ele. me businesses. On the other hand, it is a cloud computing company.
In terms of the first attribute, as an Internet business company, we have accumulated rich technology in the cloud native field in the past ten years, which is also the premise for us to do this.
Why not do it a few years earlier? I think there are two nodes that are important.
In fact, Alibaba is one of the few companies in the industry that runs all its business on the cloud, because many cloud computing companies do other businesses, not 100% on the cloud. However, we did not run all of our business on the Cloud on the first day. In 2019, Ali realized all of its core business to move to the Cloud, but moving to the Cloud to apply the Cloud is still different from today’s Cloud Native to use the Cloud.
In 2020, Ali truly adopted the way of cloud native to use Ali Cloud, which determines that we will do cloud native technology in 2021. In fact, before this, ali’s middleware technology and new technology were also provided to Ali Cloud in a component-based way for output. However, when Ali itself had not built cloud in the way of Ali Cloud to make good use of cloud in the way of cloud native, this platform was actually not established. Therefore, we hope to support such complex business in the form of cloud native technology platform first, and then export to customers after the support is completed. In 2020, after Ali completed 100% cloud bio-chemistry on the cloud, we began to deposit cloud native technology products for external customers.
InfoQ: How specifically does CNStack help enterprises solve their problems?
Swim types:In fact, when we designed CNStack, we didn’t think of a single platform to solve all product problems, so maybe it’s actually a platform-based product service.
At present, there are three members in the CNStack product family: the first member is the cloud native Stack for Application, which is oriented to the development of all our online business applications, such as the transactional applications we are familiar with, mainly oriented to the ecology of online applications;
The second is cloud native Stack for SaaS, for independent SaaS deployment software, to give you an example, such as we are using Tencent conference, Dingding, including independent software products, CNStack for SaaS can provide cloud native technology services for these products;
The third is cloud Stack for Edge. Today, Edge is a very fast developing business, and cloud Stack for Edge is a technology platform based on Edge scenes.
Then I’ll briefly expand on the capabilities provided by these three scenarios.
For cloud native Stack for Application, it provides three important capabilities:
Firstly, for the abstraction of the infrastructure, the unified management and abstraction of the infrastructure can be achieved based on K8s and containers, including the abstraction capability of providing multiple clusters and resource scheduling.
Second, the construction, management and operation of the entire application life cycle, including application development, microservices, DevOps, including the management ability of the entire application life cycle;
Third, offer rich distributed cloud native middleware, including distributed message, a distributed transaction, distributed configuration management, can be understood as the development of online applications running the build in the whole life cycle of technical support and it depends on the distributed component technology, in the technology of cloud native China to provide.
For cloud native Stack for SaaS, one of the problems with today’s SaaS scenario output is how fast it can be delivered. For example, we develop a software or Tencent conference software, for the developer of SaaS software, he hopes to only need to pay attention to the software itself code research and development, and do not need to pay attention to the software used in the database or middleware.
So in addition to the fast delivery of SaaS applications, we can provide the basic technologies that SaaS applications rely on are all embedded in the cloud native technology of SaaS applications themselves. Cloud native Stack for SaaS can be understood as an embedded platform, which is embedded in SaaS software. When embedded, it provides a fast delivery and easy operation, coupled with a comprehensive set of technical component capabilities that depend on it, while enabling IaaS adaptation of SaaS applications to any IaaS environment and shielding IaaS variability. In addition, SaaS software is the need to privatize output, need to output to customers, for this, cloud native Stack for SaaS also provides an online version, can be in the online version to do verification, testing, POC packaging, and then directly to the offline environment to install and deploy it, So it greatly improves delivery and operation efficiency, and can quickly export SaaS scenarios.
For cloud native Stack for Edge, Edge scenarios include the management of Edge devices, and how to manage it needs to be considered. However, Edge applications, unlike for SaaS and for Edge, are very light and small applications, which are sensitive to resources. At the same time, there are some middleware on the edge. In fact, we need to do some tailoring for the middleware on the edge. For example, the message of others may be different from the message in the normal distributed scene, and it should be more lightweight and more sensitive to the network. In addition, it also includes some algorithms of the edge. In many cases, the edge depends on some algorithms, such as the ability of AI, which are uniformly packaged into the edge scene.
These are the three product families of CNStack, and we will be looking forward to more products in the future.
Cloud native technology landing practice in Taiwan * *
InfoQ: Has CNStack been implemented yet?
Yj: Yes, CNStack has landed in three product families, among which we have released cloud Stack for Application and cloud Stack for SaaS. Cloud Stack for Edge may be released later.
In addition, CNStack Community edition will be available for download at the end of December, and you are welcome to use it.
InfoQ: So how is it used? I can give you a case study of relevant application scenarios.
You Ji: Ok, I believe everyone is very concerned about this topic.
We now have a cloud-native Stack for Application and a cloud-native Stack for SaaS, and I’ll give you one example each. First of all, we have a financial customer for cloud native Stack for Application, whose company name will not be disclosed here. Before CNStack was used, it was a very traditional technology Stack, probably Oracle database and Java program, and it was used in a relatively traditional way. There are no microservices, messages, etc. After the digital transformation based on CNStack, its architecture is completely based on cloud biogenesis. Through microservices and some message calls, we can obviously feel that the efficiency of the whole research and development has been improved a lot.
The reason behind is that the original application based on the integration of development, research and development of all people in a system, when the module is increased, the iterated bring lots of problems, the whole technical system equivalent to a black box, can’t see the operating state of the technical attributes, while in CNStack cloud native technology scenario, it is natural to have some observable, high availability, In addition, the entire application development, deployment, operation and maintenance life cycle has become a purely manual operation process.
At the same time, this customer, like Ali, also has a big promotion activity node like Double Eleven every year, and there will be a very large flow at this node, but it has not been successful before. Of course, I guess this is also the original intention of cloud transformation. When we test the cloud Stack for Application, we have already implanted the original and high availability guarantee capability of Alibaba’s double 11 for many years, so it also has the same high availability capability as Alibaba’s guarantee of Double 11. Therefore, the peak flow problem that our customers greatly promoted has been solved without being seen. The cloud native Stack for Application has brought significant improvements in r&d efficiency, iteration speed and machine cost, as well as cost savings in elastic expansion and resource scheduling.
Second, for cloud native Stack for SaaS, I’ll give you an example. Up to now, all of Ali’s products are actually output based on CNStack, such as dingding, ant blockchain products, big data products and some SaaS products on mobile terminal, so the obvious difference is that these SaaS software development no longer needs to pay attention to the underlying IaaS. Because the underlying IaaS are shielded by CNStack; At the same time, CNStack also provides similar middleware, Dingding no longer needs to consider the intermediary services it depends on, but also can provide very fast delivery and operation and maintenance system.
To be specific, take Ali itself as an example. In the face of other competitors, we have completed deployment and delivery based on CNStack while the competitors are still building the environment, and the delivery efficiency has been increased by about 5 times. Meanwhile, it has reduced the operation and maintenance cost of basic middleware by 90%.
InfoQ: How important do you think the introduction of cloud native technologies will be to the overall platform and the digital transformation of the enterprise?
You Ji: Back to the starting point of our technology center, we hope that after the cloud native technology center, the real business research and development, do mall business structure, can focus more on the business itself. From the business level, it can make business needs more quickly responded to, so that the business research and development team can have more time and energy to devote to business iteration and business innovation itself, which is the value that THE technology center brings to the enterprise from the business level.
Broadly speaking, it is implemented from several aspects:
First, cloud native technology improves the efficiency of the entire application build life cycle. The cloud native technology platform provides a complete distributed architecture, so the development needs of the middleware technology and other infrastructure do not need to consider. At the same time at the operational level, it supports efficient operations, provides the infrastructure to containers, business application, defects, intelligent alarm, such as the entire observable and monitoring alarm system, embedded at the same time the ability of high availability, including plans for emergency scenario plans, switches, traffic scheduling and a series of high availability capabilities, so the entire r&d efficiency has been greatly;
Second, cloud native technology saves costs. Costs in addition to the human cost, also include the cost of the machine, the cloud today there is a very core thought, elasticity and on-demand, the cloud native technology in China, it has a good elastic extension ability, don’t need to lock a lot of resources, can be flexible on demand to lock resources, resource scheduling and optimization at the same time, so in general, The technology center can save a lot of cost;
Third, cloud native technology in Taiwan has natural high availability. High availability capabilities is currently under the rapid development of Internet business is a very big challenge, because business iteration quickens, technology components become complex, technology increased, the stability of the introduction of risk will be more and more, in a cloud native technology in China, it embedded the ability of high availability, enterprise need for high availability to do too much additional work.
That is the value of cloud native technology.
InfoQ: Are there any challenges in the adoption of the concept of cloud native technology in the middle stage?
You Ji: Actually, there are many challenges. First, the medium platform of cloud native technology is oriented to enterprises. Before this, enterprises have their own heterogeneous IaaS devices, which means that hardware facilities and hardware environment are different, so how to match enterprise heterogeneous scenarios is the first challenge.
Second, whether ali’s best practices can be replicated in other enterprises also needs to be polished. The second challenge we face is how to give full play to the value of different products after we use it well in Ali.
Third, openness and compatibility. External enterprises basically use their own technology system. How to integrate the existing technology system in an open way is the third challenge faced by cloud native technology in Taiwan.
Fourth, for the cloud native technology, how to solve the problem in an integrated way, truly around the full life cycle of the application, to ensure business stability.
InfoQ: What will Alibaba do to address these challenges?
You Ji: Actually, we have been thinking of solutions to these challenges since the first day when we started to do cloud native technology. First of all, CNStack treats Ali as an external customer, so Ali is the first to take the first step in the implementation of the whole technology system. As a technology platform between the company and its subsidiaries, Ali can be supported to solve some common problems.
Second, from the first day of product design, we designed the product around supporting isomerism, including supporting domestic equipment and IaaS equipment, so it has the ability to adapt to heterogeneous IaaS.
Third, CNStack is not only seamlessly compatible with Alibaba’s own open source technology, but also with the industry’s open source technology;
Fourth, we focus on how to solve problems in an integrated way. We don’t want CNStack provide ability is componentized form, but hope to be able to really build around the application, operation, management and operations in the entire life cycle, can really get through end-to-end technology link, provide abilities of observation, monitoring, alarm, have high availability and safety production capacity at the same time, can guarantee the stability of the whole business.
InfoQ: What is ali Cloud’s master plan for cloud native technology?
You Ji: As mentioned earlier, we have released cloud native Stack for Application and cloud native Stack for SaaS. In the future, we will continue to improve the product family, including expanding AI intelligence and other scenarios. In order to enable enterprises to better use the cloud native technology, we will also launch the cloud native Stack for Edge and CNStack community edition. Community version can be downloaded for free, but also can do compatibility and migration with enterprise version, so that we can experience the ability of cloud native technology at a lower cost, which is also a perfect product family;
Second, the upgrading of product capabilities. From the application architecture design stage, in addition to providing enterprises with code research and development, can expand the low code, or even no code research and development system;
Third, be more systematic. This is something that needs to be done continuously. We hope to solve problems in a more systematic and end-to-end way, and truly solve problems in the middle stage.
Fourth, the midstage itself needs to be leaner, more stable, lighter and faster in delivery and deployment, and that’s what we’re planning for the future.
\
Q&A session * *
InfoQ: Do you have any impressive technical difficulties or “potholes” during the development of this product
You Ji: In fact, it is not easy to be a zhongtai, and there are many technical difficulties in doing zhongtai. First, it needs to be adapted. Our products will be exported to ali Cloud on different hardware facilities, but also to domestic equipment, which will have a lot of adaptation work;
Second, before we released in China cloud native technology products, there are also some modular single product form, if you want to a middle office, the integration of PaaS platform output, a certain intersection with the componentization of single product form before, how to choose in this problem, how can let componentization single products to form a good integration experience. At the same time, it also involves the top-level design problem, how to integrate or better connect the repetition ability of different componentized single products, and it takes us a lot of time and energy to solve this problem.
InfoQ: I’m sure there will be some bumps in the road. Can you share some of the ups and downs?
You Ji: Because we just launched a few days ago, it’s not easy to get the earliest users. In the early stages, our delivery deployment was not ideal, and the whole delivery required us to invest a lot of research and development capabilities to bridge the initial holes. Although we had done countless tests and drills at home, we still had network, storage, or hardware issues, so we put a lot of effort into delivery and operations early on.
Of course, today we can deliver the product for several hours or even without going to the site, which is very difficult. In fact, we have paid a lot behind the scenes.
InfoQ: There is some controversy in the middle platform, do you think there will be any impact on CNStack?
You Ji: I know there are some controversies in the Zhongtai. Some companies are dismantling zhongtai, including Ali himself, but I don’t think there is a problem with the definition of Zhongtai itself. The problem lies in how we build and build Zhongtai.
There is nothing wrong with the concept of the center stage, what kind of things to put in the center stage, what kind of things not to put in the center stage, I think we should consider the first day of the design of the center stage, the center stage design, it will improve efficiency, can make the front desk business faster, on the contrary, if the design is not clear, will hinder the operation of the center stage.
Therefore, for the business center, we must split clear enough, what kind of ability to provide by the center, what kind of ability by the flexibility of the front end to expand freely, many times, I found that we do not have a reasonable handle this boundary problem when using the center.
In my opinion, the biggest controversy today actually focuses on the business platform, because at the business level, it is difficult to distinguish what kind of business should be integrated into the platform and what kind of technology should be put in the foreground.
However, the boundary of cloud native technology is very clear. In the business application layer, it only provides basic development ability and operation and maintenance ability, and does not touch technology development itself and business itself. It only provides some technical ability, technical middleware, technical monitoring ability and so on. In general, for some disputes in the middle platform, I think it is still more in the business platform, and there is no great impact on the data platform and the technology platform.
Click here to go to CNStack website for more details!