Emerging technologies such as containerization, Hardware Virtualization, and edge computing are becoming more mainstream and driving organizations to adopt cloud architecture. Public cloud services are experiencing tremendous growth across every organization around the world. As per forecasts by Gartner, the worldwide investment in cloud infrastructure is typically going to increase by more than 23% by 2022. Cloud-native has proven its presence, with over 85% of enterprise applications moving to cloud architecture by 2025.
SaaS based applications enable essential tasks such as automation and supply chain to enhance growth opportunities for companies who opt to migrate to the cloud to save money and secure their database even off-site. However, you need a proper understanding of the architecture before implementing a wide variety of application interfaces.
What is Cloud Native Architecture?
Cloud native architecture consists of microservices packaged into containers that run on private, public, hybrid or multi-cloud computing infrastructure. It utilizes the services such as Lambda, Kubernetes from AWS, S3 or EC2 that allow dynamic and agile application development techniques through a cloud-based microservice.
Cloud native application is based on the microservice architectural design with loosely coupled services that work together. The microservice architecture has independent components with individual responsibilities. Applications under this orchestrated system are highly scalable, resilient fetching it as a highly usable functionality model. Cloud architecture is highly systemized with perfectly integrated resources that can be easily added or removed whenever needed.
Many cloud providers provide compatible platforms for migrating your application to cloud without any hassle. This not only improves the running efficacy but also saves your time and investment on your future expenses enticing your business propaganda with larger possibilities. Technology service providers can help organizations accelerate growth, drive product innovation and leverage emerging technologies with integrated resources to the existing infrastructure.
Cloud native infrastructure uses open-source software that are stacked to be containerized to facilitate transparency in application software and resource isolation. Containers are dynamically scheduled and are orchestrated to optimized the available resource utilization. In this architecture, applications are segmented into microservices that help increase the overall agility and maintainability of software applications. It further ensures the developers of CI/ CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery). Developers gain insight by adding new features to the application software without worrying about downtime and availability upon setting an application over the cloud.
What are Containers?
A container is a standard unit of software that packages up developed codes and all its dependencies so all the applications run reliably from one environment to other. It separates the application process from host operating system and other processes in the system and to work uniformly despite differences for instance between development and staging.
Executing a container process involves creating a running process of the container image on the top of a docker engine. A containerized software always run-on Linux and windows-based software regardless of the infrastructure. The container interacts with its own filesystem provided by the container image which is further needed to run an application. The container images are stored inside an immutable container registry.
Types of Cloud Native Designs
- Basic: A basic cloud native design usually backs up a system to the cloud via a Domain name Server (DNS). DNS acts as a load balancer between the developed codes and the application database.
- Multi-cloud: It references to the fact that one application can run on multiple cloud environments or platforms.
- Hybrid: Hybrid native designs help you connect to the application via DNS pushing the app replicas stored in another cloud platform.
At high levels, cloud-native architecture means to adapt for newer and reliable possibilities despite architectural constraints in an on-premise infrastructure. Onshore developers or software architects leverage your costs with equal opportunities for growth for a mighty useful user experience.
Cloud architecture offers multiple functionalities to adapt that in-house computing doesn’t. In-house or offline computing is often fragile and can be subjected to lesser sustainability, it is also expensive and hard to maintain. A perfectly designed cloud-native system architecture is curative, cost-efficient and can be easily maintained through continuous integration and delivery.
Core Principles of Cloud Native Architecture
Cloud native design architecture utilizes dynamic and agile development techniques that take a modular approach to build, run and update software applications. Microservices and containerization support application transfer between multiple cloud platforms if required without worrying about downtime. Integrating microservices into application development supports collaboration, efficiency and productivity as devOps teams around the world implement newer features to increase stability and efficacy during end-user usage.
Designing and running an application based on the cloud native architecture implies following certain principles to ensure optimized performance and fast delivery.
Self-Reliant containers
The existing computing concepts around containers focus on the requirements of developers and systems operators to separate application dependencies from infrastructure.
Containers and virtual machines (VM) have similar resource isolation and allocation advantages, but function differently because containers virtualize the operating system instead of hardware. Containers are more portable and efficient. Containers provide mobility for better system configuration that’s immutable. Docker is the most commonly used container technology as all major data service vendors or cloud service providers leverage docker offerings for IaaS or SaaS based applications.
Interaction & Collaboration
Cloud native applications use APIs to communicate between the service and the provisioned programs. Hiring development teams for your services or to hire react developers
for your application requisites, microservices offer to handle the internal communication that connects securely and resourcefully observes within the cloud native architecture between teams.
State independent Components
Designing a distributed or hybrid cloud native application requires many state-independent components to process several requests while in data sessions. Furthermore, it allows developers to repair existing instances with lowered downtime thus making any rollbacks easier.
CI/ CD pipelines and automated processes
Automation is an integral part of cloud native systems for quicker rollbacks, proper application scaling and multiple deployments. Cloud orchestration and cloud automation earn multiple benefits in this architecture.
Resilient architecture
Cloud native architecture centered around microservices that provide a strong and resilient systems to build and configure application software to deal with issues and ensure efficient recovery. With automated recovery and stateless scalable components, multiple instances can take over tasks when needed. Therefore, developers can easily minimize downtime and keep the app running to provide the best user experience.
Benefits Cloud Native Architecture
Benefits:
- With loosely coupled microservices, developers work on each microservice independently, without affecting the entire application software.
- Using a container orchestration platforms eases troubleshooting as developers can find errors without evaluating the entire application.
- Microservices framework best suits the application requirements and can be used effectively each time application software is built.
- A central container orchestrator improves performance by managing automatic scheduling and allocation of resources based on demand.
- Businesses do not have to depend on a single provider. The microservice architecture allows them to employ a multi-cloud or hybrid-cloud strategy.
Takeaway
Cloud native architecture ensures seamless migration of any application without manipulating baselines and ensures performance success each time application is deployed while identifying the troubleshooting issues dynamically. It directly validates your investment with comprehensive monitoring of your strategies.
