It will take five minutes to read this article.

preface

The blogger was transferred to Ali Cloud in April, 20, and engaged in the back-end research and development of industrial intelligent manufacturing. Since he needed to solve the deployment problems of heterogeneous environment and multi-cloud environment (public cloud, private cloud and hybrid cloud) in different customer sites, he has been exploring and practicing cloud native technologies.

The word cloud native is very hot in recent years, and readers often ask me: what is cloud native? How does it differ from traditional architectures? In what scenarios can it be applied? What value does it bring? Should I put my energy into learning it? And so on…

Take advantage of the National Day holiday to have a good talk with you about this topic, first share a popular science article “the past life of cloud native (1)”, the follow-up will continue to share their understanding of cloud native, as well as in the daily work of the practical experience of cloud native, I hope to give you inspiration ~

The origin of cloud native Pivotal

Pivotal is a leader in agile development (and a former Google client), with a pedigre (EMC, VMware, etc.). It is the pioneer and pathfinder of Cloud native with Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PAAS 2011 ~ 2013) and Spring Ecosystem framework.

The concept of Cloud Native was first proposed in 2013 by Matt Stine, a technology manager at Pivotal.

In Migrating to Cloud Native Application Architectures – Migrating to Cloud Native Application Architectures, A booklet published in 2015, Matt Stine defines several characteristics that qualify for Cloud Native Architectures:

  • Twelve-factor App: a collection of patterns for cloud native application architecture
  • Microservices: Independently deployed services that do one thing at a time
  • Self-service Agile Infrastructure: A platform for providing application environments and services quickly, repeatably, and consistently
  • Api-based Collaboration: Interaction between services is based on interfaces rather than local method calls
  • Anti-Fragility: The system can withstand high loading

The original source: www.mattstine.com/publication…

In a 2017 interview with InfoQ, Matt Stine changed the definition of Cloud Native Architecture slightly to include the following six characteristics:

  • Modularity
  • Observability
  • Deployability
  • Testability
  • Disposability
  • Replaceability

The original source: www.infoq.com/articles/cl…

In 2019, VMware Tanzu acquired Pivotal, whose website provides an updated definition of cloud native and architectural principles for cloud native:

  • Cloud native is a methodology for building and running applications that leverages the strengths of cloud computing delivery models. When enterprises use cloud native architectures to develop and operate applications, they can respond more quickly to customer needs and bring new ideas to market.
  • While public clouds have influenced the infrastructure mindset of almost all industries, cloud-like delivery is not limited to public environments. Cloud-native development is suitable for both public and private clouds, and you only care about how applications are created and deployed, not where.
  • More important is the ability to provide developers with on-demand access to computing power and modern data and application services. Cloud native development combines DevOps, continuous delivery, microservices, and containers.
  • Cloud native architecture principles: DevOps, Microservices, Containers, Security

tanzu.vmware.com/cloud-nativ…

Cloud native development CNCF

CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation) is a Foundation organization jointly led by Google, RedHat and other leading companies in the field of open source infrastructure. Its purpose is very clear. In order to counter the situation that Docker, a popular company, was the dominant company in the container circle. CNCF, with its Kubernetes project, rode the wave of open source community choreography, and has since taken up the banner of cloud native definition and promotion.

In 2015, Google’s main purpose was to attack Docker, so its definition of cloud native is relatively narrow, including the following three aspects:

  • Microservices Architecture
  • Application containerization
  • Support for container orchestration and container scheduling

In 2018, known as the first year of cloud native, a large number of technology companies began to accept the concept of cloud native, and have joined the big family of cloud native. In addition, mainstream cloud computing providers have joined CNCF, which continues to enrich the whole cloud ecosystem. CNCF redefines cloud native (and greatly expands the extension of cloud native) :

  • Cloud native technologies enable organizations to build and run applications that can scale flexibly in new dynamic environments such as public, private and hybrid clouds. Cloud native technologies include containers, service grids, microservices, immutable infrastructure, and declarative apis.
  • These technologies enable the construction of loosely-coupled systems that are fault-tolerant, easy to manage, and easy to observe. Combined with reliable automation, cloud native technology enables engineers to easily make frequent and predictable significant changes to systems.
  • The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) is dedicated to fostering and maintaining a vendor-neutral open source ecosystem to promote cloud native technologies. We make these innovations available to the masses by democratizing the most cutting-edge models.

github.com/cncf/toc/bl…

In 2021, hundreds of enterprises and institutions have joined CNCF to participate in the construction of cloud native, including amazon, Microsoft, Cisco, Huawei, Ali Cloud and other large technology companies. As of October 2021, CNCF has graduated 16 projects and is incubating 23 projects. The following is the CNCF panorama:

CNCF. IO…

In order to help enterprises and institutions better implement cloud native applications on the basis of complex infrastructure, CNCF gives ten specific implementation steps on the whole. Products or services listed in Landscape can be selected for different steps. Here is CNCF’s roadmap for cloud native practices:

Original image from: github.com/cncf/landsc… , is constantly updated, Chinese translation as follows:

With such a detailed roadmap of cloud-native practices, it’s easy for every developer to build their own cloud-native application.

summary

The definition of cloud native is constantly changing as the ecosystem and boundaries of cloud native continue to expand. Different companies (Pivotal & CNCF) have different definitions for it by different people, and the same company has different definitions for cloud native at different times. Extrapolating from Moore’s Law, the definition of cloud native will certainly continue to change in the future.

Let’s look beyond the technical and organizational dimensions of Both Pivotal and CNCF:

  • Pivotal aims at the end-to-end solution and digital transformation of PaaS layer. It has a set of models from culture, process, methodology, blueprint planning, software development mode, etc. Its main users are ciOs of traditional large and medium-sized enterprises, and the overall strategy is top-down.
  • CNCF is based on the whole cloud computing ecosystem and technology innovation and change, and focuses on technology, tool chain and underlying infrastructure. Its main users are developers in the open source community, Internet and emerging enterprises. Its influence can be imagined, and the overall strategy is bottom-up.
  • Conclusion: Pivotal is the forerunner of Cloud Native concept and methodology, and CNCF is the best practitioner of Cloud Native.

Regardless of how the definition of cloud native changes, the essence of cloud native is to help developers and enterprises ensure that loose-coupled systems can be better monitored and managed on top of complex infrastructures. The ecological applications of cloud are becoming more and more flourishing. I believe that in the near future, there will be more great technologies landing around us and affecting everyone of us.

reference

  • The cloud native has come, just distribution zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/152430776
  • “CNCF – cloud native computing foundation introduction to www.wenjiangs.com/doc/nicwvs6…
  • The open source based: a brief history of CNCF and roadmap Trail Map “blog.csdn.net/liumiaocn/a…