Introduction to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation
Kubernetes and Related Ecosystem
The Cloud Native Landscape is described on the Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s website:
Introduction to Cloud Native Computing Foundation
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) is a Linux Foundation non-profit organization established in 2015 to promote adopting and standardizing cloud-native computing technologies. The CNCF is responsible for hosting and supporting some of the most important open-source projects in the cloud-native ecosystem, such as Kubernetes, Prometheus, and Envoy, along with a few other projects. The foundation also provides a vendor-neutral home for community-driven projects and serves as a neutral arbiter for technical decisions related to cloud-native computing. The CNCF has played a pivotal role in driving the adoption of cloud-native technologies, providing a framework for collaboration and innovation within the industry — to promote the adoption and standardization of cloud-native computing technologies. The CNCF has played a pivotal role in driving the adoption of cloud-native technologies, providing a framework for collaboration and innovation within the industry.
CNCF and Cloud Platforms
Cloud providers play a crucial role in supporting and driving the adoption of cloud-native technologies through collaboration with CNCF, integrating CNCF projects into their platforms, and providing complementary services and education. Their involvement helps customers leverage the benefits of cloud-native architectures and empowers them to build modern, scalable, and resilient applications in the cloud.
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
AWS and CNCF have a relationship where AWS provides its cloud services while also engaging with CNCF and supporting the adoption and development of cloud-native technologies through contributions, collaboration, and alignment with CNCF standards.
Google’s relationship with CNCF is deeply rooted. Google’s contribution to Kubernetes as a founding project, ongoing participation in the community, and support for various CNCF projects demonstrates its commitment to driving the adoption and advancement of cloud-native technologies.
Azure
Azure’s relationship with CNCF involves support for Kubernetes, integration with CNCF projects, collaboration with the CNCF community, open-source contributions, availability of cloud-native solutions in the Azure Marketplace, and educational resources to promote the adoption of cloud-native technologies. Azure’s efforts align with CNCF’s goals of advancing cloud-native practices and fostering interoperability across the cloud-native ecosystem.
Open-Source Project Under CNCF
The most significant of the Open-Source Projects that are part of the Cloud Native Landscape are:
· Kubernetes
· Prometheus
· Envoy
· Jaeger
· OpenTracing
· Open Policy Agent
Introduction to Kubernetes
Kubernetes, often abbreviated as K8s, is an open-source platform for managing containerized workloads and services. Initially developed by Google, Kubernetes has become the de facto standard for deploying, scaling, and managing containerized applications in the cloud-native ecosystem. Kubernetes provides robust features, including automatic scaling, self-healing, and load balancing, making it an ideal choice for building highly available and resilient systems. With Kubernetes, developers can quickly deploy and manage applications across multiple environments, from on-premises data centers to public and private clouds. Kubernetes also provides a rich set of APIs, tools, and extensions that make it highly extensible and customizable to meet any organization’s or deployment’s needs. The popularity of Kubernetes has been a critical driver of the growth of the cloud-native ecosystem, and its continued development and support by the CNCF ensures that it will remain a crucial component of modern infrastructure for years to come.
Introduction to Prometheus
Prometheus is an open-source monitoring and alerting system developed by the CNCF. Initially developed by SoundCloud, Prometheus is designed to provide highly scalable and flexible monitoring of cloud-native applications and infrastructure. Prometheus collects metrics from various sources, including applications, services, and operating systems, and stores them in a time-series database. Prometheus provides a powerful query language and visualization tools that allow users to gain insights quickly and efficiently into the health and performance of their systems. In addition, Prometheus integrates with a wide range of third-party tools and services, making it highly extensible and adaptable to meet any organization’s or deployment’s needs. The CNCF’s ongoing support of Prometheus is a testament to its importance in the cloud-native ecosystem and its potential to continue driving innovation around monitoring and observability.
Introduction to Envoy
Envoy is an open-source, cloud-native proxy developed by the CNCF and initially created by engineers at Lyft. Envoy is designed to be highly performant, scalable, and extensible, making it an ideal solution for modern service-oriented architectures. Envoy provides robust features, including load balancing, traffic routing, service discovery, and observability, making it an essential component of many cloud-native applications. Envoy’s modular architecture allows it to be customized and extended to meet the specific needs of a particular environment or application, and it has become a popular choice among developers for building distributed systems. The CNCF’s ongoing support of Envoy is a testament to its importance in the cloud-native ecosystem and its potential to continue driving innovation in the future.
Introduction to Jaeger
Jaeger is an open-source distributed tracing system initially developed by Uber and donated to the CNCF in 2017. Jaeger is designed to help developers monitor and troubleshoot complex distributed systems by providing insights into the relationships between different services and the flow of requests. Jaeger’s architecture is highly scalable and can handle large volumes of trace data, making it ideal for large-scale production environments. Jaeger also provides a rich set of features, including dynamic sampling, service dependency analysis, and anomaly detection, that help users quickly identify and diagnose system issues. With its focus on tracing, Jaeger plays a critical role in the cloud-native ecosystem by assisting developers to ensure the reliability and performance of their applications, and its ongoing development and support by the CNCF ensure that it will continue to be a key component of modern infrastructure for years to come.
Introduction to OpenTracing
OpenTracing is a vendor-neutral standard for distributed tracing that allows for consistent and standardized instrumentation of applications. OpenTracing was developed by distributed tracing experts and donated to the CNCF in 2016. OpenTracing provides a simple and powerful way for developers to instrument their applications, allowing them to gain insights into the performance and behavior of their distributed systems. OpenTracing is compatible with various tracing systems, including Jaeger, Zipkin, and Prometheus. It provides a consistent set of APIs that allow developers to switch between tracing systems without changing their instrumentation code. With its focus on standardization and compatibility, OpenTracing plays a critical role in the cloud-native ecosystem by providing a common language for distributed tracing that allows developers to build more reliable and performant systems. The ongoing development and support of OpenTracing by the CNCF ensure that it will continue to be an essential component of modern infrastructure for years to come.
Introduction to Open Policy Agent
The CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation) Open Policy Agent (OPA) is an open-source project that provides a general-purpose policy engine for cloud-native environments. It enables fine-grained policy-based control over various aspects of the system, such as access control, resource allocation, configuration management, and more.
OPA follows a declarative approach to policy enforcement, allowing you to specify policies in a high-level, human-readable language called Rego. Rego provides a flexible and expressive syntax for defining policies and rules based on logical conditions. Policies can be written to evaluate requests, make decisions, and enforce policies based on the desired behavior of the system.
OPA is designed to be decoupled from any specific service or technology, making it highly versatile and capable of integrating various applications and platforms. It can be used as a standalone service or embedded directly within existing software systems, making it accessible to multiple use cases.
CNCF OPA offers a powerful and flexible policy engine that brings policy-based control and governance to cloud-native systems. Its versatility, ease of integration, and declarative policy language make it popular for implementing fine-grained policies in cloud-native environments.
Conclusion
A series of Blog Posts will follow. Please do check back for the follow-on articles.
Useful External References:
CNCF Blog — https://www.cncf.io/blog/
AWS Open Source Blog: Cloud Native Computing — https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/cloud-native-computing/
