Our twenty-eighth issue of the Architects’ Newsletter again focuses on multi-cloud and cloud native application development. We believe these topics are vitally important, and these themes are visible at every stage of adoption, in our latest DevOps and Cloud InfoQ Trends Reporthref>. Understanding all the emerging technologies, patterns, and techniques is essential for a modern software architect.

News

CNCF CloudEvents Specification Reaches Version 1.0 Milestone

CloudEventshref> is an open-source specificationhref> for describing event data in a standard way, and is intended to ease event declaration and delivery across services, platforms, and beyond. The driving force behind the specification is the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)href>, which recently announced the specification had reached a version 1.0 milestone.

Besides cloud vendors supporting CloudEvents, some offer services that support additional event formats. For instance, Amazon has EventBridgehref>, a service for customers to build and manage event-driven solutions. TriggerMesh has recently released the EveryBridgehref> platform offering, a cross-cloud event bus that enables event-driven, cloud-native applications across multiple cloud providers and on-premises infrastructures.

Bryan Liles on Making Kubernetes Easier for Developers

In this InfoQ podcast, Daniel Bryant sat down with Bryan Lileshref>, senior staff engineer at VMware. Liles mused that cloud native platforms like Kubernetes are complicated, as there are lots of moving parts. Although Kubernetes is fast becoming a cross-cloud fabric, the most important challenge to be tackled to increase the adoption of frameworks like Kubernetes is “how do we move code from our IDEs to wherever it needs to run with the least amount of friction?”

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) has created a series of communities of practice called Special Interest Groups (SIGs), such as SIG App Deliveryhref>. This allows folks with similar interests to work together as a community, focusing on solving a specific set of well-scoped problems. There are many ways to get involved, from discussions, to coding and creating documentation.

Fully Managed Serverless Platform Google Cloud Run is Now GA

Google Cloud Run is Google's fully managed solution for running containerized, serverless applicationshref>. After a six-month beta phase, Cloud Run is now generally available, along with Cloud Run for Anthoshref>, which enables running Google Cloud Run application across cloud vendors and on premises using a Google Kubernetes Enginehref> cluster. Google claims that Cloud Run brings the best of both serverless and containers together. It allows engineers to write code in any language they choose, using any binary, without having to worry about starting and stopping containers or managing underlying infrastructure.

Google claims that Cloud Run brings the best of both serverless and containers together. It allows engineers to write code in any language they choose, using any binary, without having to worry about starting and stopping containers or managing underlying infrastructure.

Managing Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Platforms with Microsoft Azure Arc

During Microsoft’s recent Ignitehref> conference, the company announced several new hybrid cloud products and services. One of the most significant announcements was Azure Archref>, a service released in preview that allows enterprises to bring Azure services and management to any infrastructure, including AWS and Google Cloud.

The Azure Hybrid portfoliohref> currently consists of several services such as Azure Stack, Azure Update Management, and Azure File Sync. Azure Arc adds hybrid server management, Kubernetes support, and integration with Azure data services.

New Ecstasy (xtc) Programming Language Targets Cloud-Native Computing

The new programming language “Ecstasyhref>” has been co-created by former Tangosol founders Cameron Purdy and Gene Gleyzer, and they recently showcased the language at CloudNative London 2019. InfoQ sat down with Purdy and asked several questions about the language and the problems it’s designed to solve.

Key takeaways from the conversation:

• Ecstasy is a general purpose, type-safe, modular programming language built for the cloud.
• The team building the language plans to use it as the basis for a highly scalable Platform as a Service (PaaS).
• Ecstasy is still in development and is not yet ready for production use.
• The team is looking for contributors who want to be involved with defining the future of the language.

Case Study

Platforms Demystified: Cloud Foundry, Kubernetes, Eirini, and Knative

Matthias Haeussler and Dr. Nic Williams spoke at this year's SpringOne Platform 2019 Conference about the range of different cloud platforms and how they comparehref> in terms of features from a developer perspective. They discussed platforms like Cloud Foundryhref>, Kuberneteshref>, Project Eirinihref>, and the Knativehref> serverless platform.

They advised developers to avoid the "not invented here platform" anti-pattern. If a team claims to not be using a platform, then they are building their own platform; and not knowing it doesn't change the fact that they are building a DIY cloud platform. Standard platforms may not let engineers do everything they want, but they address most typical development needs.

Haeussler showed a demo of how applications are deployed in different cloud platforms. Cloud Foundry application deployment uses commands like cf push, cf scale, and cf ssh. Project Eirini is a Kubernetes backend for Cloud Foundry. Project Quarkshref> is another effort from the Cloud Foundry Foundation to package Cloud Foundry Application Runtime (CFARhref>) as containers instead of virtual machines, enabling easier deployment to Kubernetes. Eirini and Quarks can be used together in applications.

Haeussler and Williams also talked about the Cloud Native Build Packshref>, a CNCF-hosted project that can be used as a standard build and deployment process for delivering applications to cloud platforms, without developers having to worry about the platform on which the apps are being deployed. Engineers can use these build packs on their local machine or on a cluster. It can also help with rebasing layers in containers, operating system updates to existing OCI images, vulnerability detection, and deploying updates to all containers in the cluster.

They also showed how to use the Istio service-mesh framework in cloud native applications. The Knative platform helps with build and deploy, and can manage all the serverless workloads in organizations. It offers features like scale-to-zero, autoscaling, in-cluster builds, and eventing framework for cloud-native applications on Kubernetes.

This is an excerpt from the InfoQ article “Platforms Demystified: Cloud Foundry, Kubernetes, Eirini, and Knative.href>”

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