Emerging Trends and Practices

Hybrid Multi-Cloud, Microservices, and Serverless

Hybrid Multi-cloud

A computing environment that connects an organization’s on-premise private cloud and third-party public cloud into a single infrastructure for running the organization’s applications.

Hybrid Multicloud use cases

• Cloud scaling
• Composite cloud
• Modernization
• Data and AI
• Prevent lock-in to a particular cloud vendor and having a flexibility to move to a new provider of choice

Microservices

Microservices architecture:

• Single application
• coupled and independently deployable smaller components or services
  • These services typically have their own stack running on their own containers.
• They communicate with one another over a combination of:
  • APIs
  • Even streaming
  • Message brokers

What this means for businesses is:

• Multiple developers working independently
• Different stacks and runtime environments
• Independent scaling

Serverless Computing

Offloads responsibility for common infrastructure management tasks such as:

• Scaling
• Scheduling
• Patching
• Provisioning

Key attributes

Attributes that distinguish serverless computing from other compute models:

• No provisioning of servers and runtimes
• Runs code on-demand, scaling as needed
• Pay only when invoked and used i.e., not when underlying computer resources are idle.

Serverless

• Abstracts the infrastructure away from developers
• Code executed as individual functions
• No prior execution context is required

A Scenario

Serverless computing services

• IBM Cloud Functions
• AWS Lambda
• Microsoft Azure Functions

Determining Fit with Serverless

• Evaluate application characteristics

• Ensure that the application is aligned to serverless architecture patterns

  Applications that qualify for a serverless architecture include:

• Short-running stateless functions
• Seasonal workloads
• Production volumetric data
• Event-based processing
• Stateless microservices

Use Cases

Serverless architecture are well-suited for use cases around:

• Data and event processing
• IoT
• Microservices

• Mobile backends

  Serverless is well-suited to working with:

• Text
• Audio
• Image

• Video

  Tasks:

• Data enrichment
• Transformation
• Validation and cleansing
• PDF processing
• Audio normalization
• Thumbnail generation
• Video transcoding
• Data search and processing

• Genome processing

  Data Streams:

• Business
• IoT sensor data
• Log data
• Financial market data

Challenges

Vendor Dependent Capabilities

• Authentication
• Scaling
• Monitoring

• Configuration management

  

Cloud Native Applications, DevOps, and Application Modernization

Cloud Native Applications

• Developed to work only in the cloud environment
• Refactored and reconfigured with cloud native principles

Development Principles

Whether creating a new cloud native application or modernizing an existing application:

• Microservices Architecture
• Rely on Containers
• Adopt Agile Methods

Benefits

• Innovation
• Agility
• Commoditization

DevOps on the Cloud

What is DevOps?

Dev Teams:

• Design Software
• Develop Software
• Deliver Software

• Run Software

  Ops Teams

• Monitoring
• Predicting Failure
• Managing Environment

• Fixing Issues

  A collaborative approach that allows multiple stakeholders to collaborate:

• Business owners
• Development
• Operations
• Quality assurance

The DevOps Approach

It applies agile and lean thinking principles to all stakeholders in an organization who develop, operate, or benefit from the business’s software systems, including customers, suppliers, partners. By extending lean principles across the software supply chain, DevOps capabilities improve productivity through accelerated customer feedback cycles, unified measurements and collaboration across an enterprise, and reduced overhead, duplication, and rework.

Using the DevOps approach:

• Developers can produce software in short iterations
• A continuous delivery schedule of new features and bug fixes in rapid cycles
• Businesses can seize market opportunities
• Accelerated customer feedback into products

DevOps Process

• Continuous Delivery
• Continuous Integration
• Continuous Deployment
• Continuous Monitoring

• Delivery Pipeline

  

DevOps and Cloud

With its near limitless compute power and available data and application services, cloud computing platforms come with their own risks and challenges, which can be overcome by DevOps:

• Tools
• Practices

• Processes

  DevOps provides the following solutions to cloud’s complexities:

• Automated provisioning and installation
• Continuous integration and deployment pipelines
• Define how people work together and collaborate
• Test in low-cost, production-like environments
• Recover from disasters by rebuilding systems quickly and reliably

Application Modernization

Enterprise Applications

Application Modernization

Architecture: Monoliths > SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) > Microservices

Infrastructure: Physical servers > VM > Cloud

Delivery: Waterfall > Agile > DevOps