Cloud Native Kubernetes: Flow and Job Opportunities

This new article aims to indicate the new job opportunities created by a cloud-native environment.

Image n ° 1 shows the four main levels required by the architecture to function correctly ( left rectangular part).

On the right side ( circles ) are represented the occupations of the operator with respect to every single level.

Picture 1

Bottom up:

1- Storage and Network Operators ( SNOs ) are responsible for managing the hardware architecture.

Role activity number may decrease if deployed in a public cloud or IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)

2- The Operating System Operator ( OSO ) works at the level of the operating system where the k8s service is running.

The OSO needs expertise in Linux and Windows . Skills in virtualization architecture such as VMware , RedHat , Nutanix , etc. are often required.

If the architecture has been leased from the public cloud or in an IaaS in general, the skills must cover this new architecture.

3- The orchestrator operator (OO) works with the core of the cloud-native administration environment. This world needs a lot of new skills.

Automation is the child of orchestration.

The main concept is that the OO should have sufficient skills to be able to follow all the processes of “Continuous Integration” and “Continuous Delivery” (often called CI / CD ).

Image 2 gives an idea about it

The central arrows show the flow to allow the delivery of a service.

For every single arrow, there are new tools to know to manage the entire release of the service.

Just a few examples: to test the environment you can work with cucumber or Cypress.io, for distribution and construction you can use Jenkins … and so on …

Image 2

Note 1 There are so many platforms available that choosing the right one can be very challenging

4- The development operator is the role of the people who are writing lines of code. They often use software to run businesses like Jira Core and Trello.

Note 2: In my personal opinion, the vendor who creates a software layer capable of centrally managing all these 6 core activities will have a competitive advantage over their competitors.

The big vendors are already playing: RedHat is working from the beginning with its platform ( OpenStack ), VMware has released Tanzu, Nutanix with Carbonite and Microsoft will play its role with the new version of Windows 2022 .

The only good suggestion I can give you is to study this new and fantastic world.

See you soon and take care of yourself

Kubernets: Why adopt it?

Kubernetes (k8s), is an open source platform, introduced by Google, introduced as a simple container orchestration tool but has become the de facto cloud-native platform.

Because “ k8s “is it so widely used?

As it is able to respond effectively to the requests of users of service, adapt to the creativity of cloud architects, and be so stable that meets the demands of the operation.

These advantages can be summarized as follows:

  • Reliable
  • Scalable
  • Self-healing
  • Rapid
  • Efficient
  • Sure
  • Agile
  • Transportable

In this article we will develop the 8 arguments just indicated:

1- Reliability means an architecture capable of functioning even if a part of it is no longer available. K8s was conceived with a natively clustered philosophy.

2- Scalability is required to handle any peak workload. In other words, it is capable of responding to requests for new resources on demand.

The architecture model on which it is based is the decoupling. Every single component has its own characteristics and can be easily added to the k8s environment.

Through the configuration files, the various objects are authorized to communicate with each other.

The key components K8S are the nodes, the K8S services components are load balancers, name-spaces, and so on (see next items)

3- Healing: K8s acts to ensure that the current state automatically matches the desired state of the architecture .

4- Fast: K8s is able to distribute components immediately. In this way, it is possible to respond to an overload management request and/or the need to quickly implement new services.

5- Efficiency is the ratio between the useful work and the total amount of energy used to obtain the result. K8s for its architecture has the best relationship because it has essentiality in its DNA.

6- Security works closely with K8S.

a- The images that turn in the containers are by their definition immutable. This approach has a great advantage because:

No changes it is implemented at the system (container) level.

– Nothing can change the nucleus service unless the entire image is deleted and redistributed.

Let’s compare this approach with a standard environment, where there is a Linux VM.

If we wanted to install, modify, update an application on the latter, we would have to act via apt-get on the necessary packages.

By doing so, we will change the environment by actually opening a security breach.

In K8s the image is not modified but deleted and recreated.

b- Another big advantage is that configuration changes are managed through declarative files (configuration files). These files have a description of the final state of the system. The result is that they show the effect of the configuration before it is run.

7- Agility means greater ease and efficiency in creating container images than using VM images. The developer can write code regardless of compatibility issues.

8- Portability sets the standard for the software development life cycle.

Note 1: The first version of Kubernetes dates back to 2014 and was created to respond to the need to implement a solid cluster solution for container environments.

Take care and see you soon