Analysts and industry experts have concluded that by 2022 more than 90% of new enterprise apps will feature microservices architecture and AI will be one of the top workloads that will drive infrastructure decisions. Moreover, more than 50% of data will be processed outside the data center.
Amidst this, enterprises want to accelerate their path to the digital transformation, to launch new products with velocity and build sustainable competitive differentiation. Mapping that to technical aspects, devops become the centerpiece.
DevOps Needs: User-Centric View
As a developer, you want to focus on faster SW release cycles by leveraging simple, open abstraction of rich services. Also, inherent in this velocity is the decoupling of apps from underlying infrastructure, so that you can build the apps once and deploy anywhere.
As an operator, you want to simplify management and improve operational efficiency with consistent application, data, and security lifecycle management regardless of the underlying cloud.
Kubernetes technology carries a promise of portability and agility, however, it brings in a lot of underneath complexity. Due to the distributed nature of the microservices apps, the teams are now burdened with cobbling together a stack of data, observability, connectivity and security services, which isn’t easy. Researching further, here is an app-centric view of the design patterns.
Application Design Patters: App-Centric View
Type-1 are simple, stateful containerized apps, whereby the services needed from the underlying platform are the k8s layer and high-quality, persistent shared volumes.
As teams get more comfortable with containerized applications, they move to Type-2 non-trivial micro services based applications which will, in addition, require service mesh, LB/ingress, message bus, data security, app monitoring, log forwarding etc. PaaS services.
Type-3 specialized microservices based apps for AI, IoT, hybrid cloud use cases will, in addition, require GPUaaS, ML model mgmt, data pipelines, data integration etc. services.
So, taking on these blueprints and mapping to Devops needs, you can explore two approaches for selecting the underlying platform.
The first one is similar to having your own car, whereby you are responsible for parking, registration, compliance, maintenance, upgrade i.e. Focus is on “how”, where you are in control with responsibility for plumbing services and lifecycle management. Type-1 apps fit this approach very well where all you need is a great car or a great k8s layer (K8-aaS).
The other approach is to leverage Uber type services, which provides ready-to-go customization with service catalog, built-in ride pooling (or multi-tenancy), and even easy switch to alternate providers (aka multi-cloud) etc. And non-trivial Type-2 and Type-3 apps fit this approach very well as the focus is on “what” to achive the end objective by merely expressing the intent (PaaS).
Btw, both are valid choices, as some us have our own cars or some of us just do uber or do both. And, there are other vendors with products on either side. And, those offerings do fall short on simplicity, openness or richness, which is why Nutanix is introducing Karbon Platform Services and as well giving you the freedom to do both (K8-aaS and K8s-based PaaS)
Introducing Nutanix Karbon Platform Services
Karbon Platform Services (KPS) is a Kubernetes based multi-cloud PaaS that enables rapid development and deployment of microservices-based applications ranging from simple stateful containerized applications to complex web-scale applications across any cloud — private, public or edge.
Key benefits include:
SaaS-based Multicloud Operations:
Leveraging ISO-certified SaaS-based Infrastructure and application lifecycle manager, Ops teams can benefit from simplified operations and uniform application, data, and security lifecycle management, regardless of the underlying cloud, at web-scale. Developers can benefit from the rich platform services to write applications once and deploy in any cloud.
Services-Rich Extensible PaaS
You can now develop and deploy apps quickly by leveraging simple, open abstractions of rich managed services, which you don’t have to lifecycle, secure or scale. Karbon Platform services provide following services:
Application Runtime
- Kubernetes Apps: Container-as-a-Service with the ability to provision, run, manage and monitor Kubernetes apps as pods of isolated containers without worrying about underlying Kubernetes orchestration or complexity. Developers can bring in standard Kubernetes compliant YAML, or Helm charts and deploy across one or multiple Service Domains though 1-click.
- Serverless Functions and Data Pipeline: Function-as-a-Service to run business logic packaged as raw code (Python, Node.js, Golang..) directly by leveraging built-in runtimes or custom uploads. Invoke functions based on incoming data triggers and publish the transformed data to local service domain or external service endpoints through built-in connectors.
- AI Inferencing: ML model management and AI Inferencing runtime (though abstraction of underlying GPUs and HW accelerators) shared across Containers and Functions.
Ingress Controller
- Choice of Nginx or Traefik for content-based routing, load balancing, SSL/TLS termination.
Service Mesh
- Istio for traffic management, policy enforcement, and telemetry collection
Data Streaming | Messaging
- Choice of Kafka for persistent or NATS for in-memory, high performance messaging
App Monitoring
- Prometheus for time-series app metrics collection and monitoring.
Logging Service
- Centralized real-time log monitoring, log bundle collection and external log forwarding to AWS CloudWatch etc.
The PaaS services allow you to be functional quickly, while at the same time the built-in extensible service broker architecture gives you the flexibility to leverage broader kubernetes innovation ecosystem and seamlessly add your own services.
Integrate your existing Kubernetes environments
If you already have an existing Kubernetes cluster, be it from Nutanix Karbon, EKS or GKE, you can import it easily into KPS SaaS management with just a few basic steps. Leveraging this Infrastructure Service, you can start managing various k8s deployments and have unified observability through the Kubernetes dashboard made available through this centralized management plane.
Hybrid PaaS
You can enjoy the flexibility to securely connect to your existing data lakes in any cloud using the built-in data interfaces (AWS S3/Kinesis/SQS, Azure Blob Storage, GCP CloudStorage etc.). This is particularly useful for Type-3 apps, which are truly stretched across different clouds. The transparent, WAN-optimized data pipelines enable cross cloud data mobility and management for hybrid applications
Enhanced Security Posture:
With Karbon Platform Services, IT operations teams can leverage a consistent security and API model with unified observability for data and applications across cloud. KPS provides automated, system-managed security and access control with built-in multi-tenancy through the concept of Projects construct. You can securely partition (logical) a Service Domain to serve different use cases or can group multiple Service Domains to serve as different environments (Production/Staging/Development). For compliance, you have access to the detailed audit-trail.
Ease of Infrastructure Provisioning across multi-cloud
KPS instance is referred to as a Service Domain (per product terminology), however think of it as an AZ (Availability Zone) that can be fired up in the private or the public cloud. The Service Domains can run in multi-node or 1-node configurations on Nutanix, VMware, AWS, GCP, Azure or even on bare metal devices.
Adding a node to this Service Domain is as easy as punching the serial number of the device in this portal. Once the actual device shows up in the network, it is going to call this mothership, take on the personality and auto configure itself. This is leveraging the consumer-grade design of onboarding Chromecast-like devices, but for a reasonably complex PaaS instance. Moreover, upgrades are 1-click as well.
Accelerating cloud-native journey of Hardis Group
“We were looking for a single PaaS platform that could host our Reflex and Vision Insights on both the edge and in our private cloud, to take advantage of both a distributed architecture as well as support software development and machine training on the public cloud,” said Damien Pasquinelli, CTO at Hardis Group. “Karbon Platform Services delivers the richness of services we need in a PaaS solution, along with the simplicity and ease of management Nutanix is known for — across clouds. Implementing Karbon Platform Services has allowed our Vision Insights development and DevOps teams to go from zero to prototype in less than a quarter of the time it previously took. This software running on Karbon Platform Services is already in production for customers like Schneider Electric, a leading global specialist in energy management and automation.”
Example Deployment blueprint
Here is an example deployment blueprint of a Woodkraft application. Leverage the deep-dive labs on GitHub for access to this blueprint and others to explore how the development and deployment can be accelerated using KPS.
Get started on your modernization journey now
Now, you too can start your modernization journey with ease. If you already have an existing Kubernetes cluster, you can import it in the KPS SaaS management plane to get unified observability as well as get exposed to the built-in PaaS constructs. If you are new to cloud-native journey, start your free trial of Karbon Platform Services.
Either way, drop us a line to sign up for a workshop as our commitment to you is that we will hold your hand to take this journey together and accelerate your path to innovation.
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“The complexities of Kubernetes and multicloud infrastructure management can not only overwhelm IT operations teams, but also limit the resources and tooling available to modern application software developers . With Karbon Platform Services, Nutanix abstracts infrastructure complexity and delivers a managed Kubernetes, containers, and a host of essential developer services in an easy, readily-consumable PaaS environment,” said Bob Laliberte, Practice Director & Senior Analyst at ESG Research. “And given that 70% of customers we’ve recently surveyed1 prefer the combination of public cloud and private datacenter for containerized applications, Karbon Platform Services satisfies that desire for flexibility with its global control plane and simple multicloud management capabilities.”
