Abstract: In-depth interpretation of Aliyun Serverless Kubernetes, introduces the Open Service Broker API standard support.
Alibaba Cloud recently announced the launch of Serverless Kubernetes service, which aims to lower the threshold of using container technology and simplify the operation and maintenance of container platform. At the same time, ali Cloud Service is released to Open Service Broker API standard support, through a consistent, simple, extensible interface, convenient and unified delivery of various types of development services to Cloud Foundry, Kubernetes and other Cloud native application platform; Easily realize application development in a multi-cloud environment, so that users pay more attention to their own business innovation.
Evolving cloud computing
There is no longer a question of “should cloud computing be adopted?” there is more focus on “how will cloud computing further save costs and create business value?”
It is generally believed that more advanced cloud computing services should make users do not need to pay attention to environment configuration, server management, maintenance and upgrade operations, that is, the time-consuming work with the cloud resource layer should be removed and more energy should be focused on the development and implementation of the business layer.
The whole IT operation and maintenance technology has gone through three stages of physical machine, virtual machine and cloud, while the emerging container technology and Serverless are regarded as a higher stage of cloud computing by the industry. That is, the focus of IT’s role has shifted from saving costs and providing support to preparing for war and leading innovation. As emerging technologies, container technology and Serverless are more simple and efficient compared with the traditional huge single architecture. It’s an important tool in the current microservices and DevOps culture.
The innovation of container technology is that the application is packaged into an image in a standard form. The image contains all the information required for application operation. The image can shield differences and quickly open several containers, thus realizing elastic expansion of application services. Images as deliverables make development, testing, operation, deployment, and release smoother and more efficient. Containers can “Build, Ship, and Run Any App, Anywhere,” as Docker, the company that launched the container wave, put it.
Like container technology, ServerLess has the original intention of making the process of developing applications easier. Serverless is a broad and evolving concept that aims to make cloud services machine-free and scalable in real time on demand without the need to manually manage the underlying resources. Compared with the traditional Server-base mode, it pays more attention to freeing users from the complicated configuration management work and focuses more on the innovation of its own business logic.
Brendan Burns, co-founder of Kubernetes, says that looking back at the overall evolution of container technology, there are two very clear evolution clues: one is the decoupling of the business architecture to clarify team responsibilities, and the other is the need for developers to focus more on application development (which is the most important thing); He also said that “the future of Kubernetes is Serverless”. Kubernetes hides the underlying machine information and provides users with a Serverless operating experience for the container. Kubernetes was built to give developers an application-oriented API and to make users forget the details of machines and machine management, but it hasn’t been easy to live up to that initial promise. He predicts that most people’s Kubernetes clusters will be a hybrid between dedicated machines and serverless computing container infrastructures.
Forget the details of server administration. No server runs container applications
Ali Cloud provides the largest public cloud container service in China and is the first provider of functional computing service in China. Now, between container and Serverless, Ali Cloud also provides a new form of cloud service — Serverless Kubernetes container service. Compared with the Serverless operation of code based on function calculation, Serverless Kubernetes provides a Serverless operation environment for container applications. Based on the powerful Aliyun elastic computing infrastructure, Serverless Kubernetes has the advantages of easy to use, pay on demand, compatibility and package integration, security isolation, capacity expansion on demand and interconnection.
In the classic Kubernetes container cluster mode, users have a high degree of flexibility, can fine-grained control of cluster infrastructure and container applications, such as host instances (such as GPU instances, bare-metal servers) and operating system, K8S version, network model, etc. You can also upgrade the cluster at your own pace, monitor application container resource usage, and manually or automatically expand or shrink the cluster based on capacity planning.
In Serverless cluster mode, users only need to specify the application container image, CPU and memory requirements, and select the external service mode to directly start the application. Easy to use, users can create clusters in 5 seconds, deploy applications in 30 seconds, and expand on demand. Fully compatible with existing Kubernetes applications, support standard API, CLI to deploy and manage applications; While communicating with existing applications and databases in private networks (VPCS), application containers are securely isolated from each other to prevent interference and ensure enterprise-level high availability and security.
Serverless Kubernetes combines the high portability and flexibility of containers with the flexible scheduling and isolation provided by Ali Cloud elastic computing. Its application scenarios are very wide, and it can be flexibly and conveniently deployed in web applications, mobile application back-end services, multimedia processing, data processing, continuous integration and other scenarios. Great for batch tasks and emergent work.
Serverless Kubernetes is based on ali Cloud infrastructure capacity, is eco-compatible with Kubernetes, and can be fully integrated with users’ existing application environment.
As the largest public cloud container service in China, Ali Cloud container products have served more than thousands of enterprises. The vision of container service is to help enterprise IT move to the cloud, realize multi-cloud strategy, and modernize IT with cloud native technology, thus boosting business innovation. Serverless Kubernetes will provide users with more choices, further lowering the threshold of using container technology on the basis of compatibility with existing mainstream open source technology, allowing users to focus on application and innovation.
Support the Open Service Broker API standard with respect to cloud
In the era of cloud computing, due to geographic coverage, data security, cost and other reasons, enterprises are beginning to consider the choice of hybrid cloud or multi-cloud mode. In order to give users more freedom to choose, Ali Cloud provides support for Cloud Foundry, Kubernetes/Docker, Terraform, Ansible, Chef, Open Service Broker API and other mainstream Open source community technologies. This helps users have a consistent application and resource management experience in the cloud and local data center. Not long ago, Ali Cloud became Cloud Foundry certified Cloud foundation design provider and gold member of CF Foundation.
On May 2nd, Ali Cloud Container Service officially released standard support for Open Service Broker API. Users can deliver various types of services to different Cloud native application platforms such as Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes conveniently and uniformly through a consistent, simple and extensible interface.
The Open Service Broker API is derived from the Cloud Foundry Service Brokers component and was contributed as a separate community Open source project in 2016. It has become the industry’s de facto standard for cloud application integration and management services.
In the past, if multiple types of cloud services were selected, users often needed to write different codes and execute different operation procedures to achieve centralized application integration and management, which was complicated and inefficient to use.
Now, Ali Cloud follows the Open Service Broker API standard and provides a series of Service Broker components, realizing aliyun services such as cloud database Service RDS, object storage Service OSS, and mainstream Open source services such as MySQL/MariaDB, Spark, Perfect support for RabbitMQ, etc. Specifically, users can browse various services on the service catalog interface provided by container services, easily create and destroy service instances of different specifications, dynamically bind service instances to target applications, and inject access information of service instances into corresponding application containers in a secure way.
In supporting the Open Service Broker API standard, Ali Cloud takes cross-platform versatility into account. At present, the applications that users deploy in AliYun Kubernetes service and Cloud Foundry can create, bind and invoke the above services in the same way, and several domestic and foreign customers have benefited from this.
In addition to continuously optimizing the Cloud Foundry/Kubernetes ecosystem’s connectivity to the Ari Cloud, future users will be able to integrate their applications into other Cloud platforms or their own services through the Open Service Broker API. Ali Cloud helps users to implement multi-cloud strategies and hybrid cloud solutions, respecting users’ wishes and providing users with great flexibility.
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