Table Of ContentPRESS
Accelerating Digital
Transformation with
Containers and
Kubernetes
An Introduction to
Cloud-Native Technology
Author
Steve Hoenisch
Warning and Disclaimer
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Contents
Introduction 8
Organization of this Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8
Point of Departure:
Cloud-Native Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9
Driving Digital Transformation with Containers
and Kubernetes 13
The Business Value of Digital Transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Cloud-Native Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
12-Factor Apps: A Methodology for
Delivering Software as a Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
The Business Value of Kubernetes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
An Example Use Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Demystifying Kubernete s 19
Platform vs. Runtime Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Robust Open-Source Technology from a
Google Production System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Defogging the Abstract Terminology of Kubernetes . . . . . . . . . 20
A Concise Overview of Kubernetes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Just Another Fad in the Hype Cycle? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Kubernetes in Production Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
A Rapidly Maturing Ecosystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Kubernetes Won’t Solve All Your Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Introduction to Cloud-Native Architectures
and Practices 27
Microservices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27
Deconstructing the Monolith and Other Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . 29
Kubernetes for Cloud-Native and 12-Factor Applications . . . . . 30
Profle of a DevOps Engineer: Responsibilities and Skills . . . . . 32
Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment . . . . . . . . 34
Container Technology in the
Software-Defned Data Center 35
VMware vSphere and the SDDC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Abstract and Automate: Network Virtualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Risk-Free Scale Out with Ease: Virtual Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37
Put a Lid on It: Security for Containers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Linux Container Hosts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Securing Cloud Platforms with Lightwave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Managing Container Images with Harbor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Microservices Meets Micro- segmentation: Delivering
Developer-Ready Infrastructure for Modern Application
Development with NSX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
An Introduction to Cloud-Native Technology | 3
BOSH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
CFCN for Deploying and Operating Kubernetes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Container Platforms and Services 70
High-Level Use Cases for Container Platforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Maturity of Container Adoption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Cloud Natives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Matching the Platform to the Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Prescription and Complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
vSphere Integrated Containers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73
VMware Pivotal Container Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Use Cases 101
Self-Service Infrastructure for Agile Development . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Replatforming Applications with PKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .106
Deploying New Cloud-Native Apps with PKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .108
Exploiting the Power of Containers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .109
Running a Containerized App with
Photon OS on Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute . . . . . . . . . . . . . .109
Using vSphere Integrated Containers to Solve
Container Networking Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .120
Providing Persistent Storage for Legacy Applications . . . . . . . . 124
Setting Up a Developer Sandbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Deploying Jenkins by Using VIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Optimizing Cloud-Native Apps with PCF and
Developer-Ready Infrastructure from VMware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Case Study: Optimizing Critical Banking Workloads . . . . . . . . . 158
Conclusion 162
Glossary 163
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Author and Contributors
Author and Editor
Steve Hoenisch is a technology evangelist,
writer, and editor who specializes in emerging
technology and cloud-native solutions He’s
written numerous infuential technical white
papers and magazine articles on digital
transformation, Kubernetes, containers, big data,
Hadoop, storage platforms, security, and
regulatory compliance A former newspaper
editor with a master’s degree in linguistics, he
has published articles in XML Journal, The
Hartford Courant, and the Chicago Tribune He
works in the Cloud-Native Apps business unit at
VMware
Contributors
Ben Corrie has been a leading voice of technical
innovation in the container space at VMware for
three years Ben was the initiator of the research
that led to the vSphere Integrated Containers
product and as an architect on that product,
Ben’s role now is to look 6 to 12 months ahead to
help align VMware with the container challenges
ahead
Patrick Daigle is a Senior Technical Marketing
Architect in Montreal, Canada As part of
VMware’s Cloud-Native Applications business
unit, he focuses on vSphere Integrated
Containers and works with enterprises around
the globe, explaining and demonstrating the
benefts of VMware container solutions and how
they can bring value to the business
An Introduction to Cloud-Native Technology | 5
Contributors, cont
Ning Ge is a Senior Product Marketing Manager
in VMware’s Cloud-Native Apps business unit
and works on VMware’s container solutions, such
as VMware Pivotal Container Service and
vSphere Integrated Containers Ning has over 7
years of experience in marketing enterprise
software technologies and solutions, and her
main area of focus includes container and cloud-
native, middleware, and infrastructure
technologies Ning has master’s degrees in both
Business Administration and Communications
Merlin Glynn is a product manager at VMware,
where he builds products that help customers
architect and deploy cloud-native applications
Merlin has been building complex environments
as an architect for over 20 years, focusing on
solutions for large enterprises and the academic
and scientifc community Previously, he
architected some of the world’s largest
supercomputers at IBM, which were regularly
listed on the TOP500 list, and, at Pivotal,
designed many next-generation Pivotal Cloud
Foundry platforms for key enterprise customers
Merlin is a certifed AWS Solutions Architect He
enjoys volunteering for charities
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Simone Morellato is currently a Director of
Technical Product Management at VMware
where he leads technical product management
and marketing eforts for the company’s Cloud-
Native Applications business unit Simone has
more than 16 years of experience in storage,
networking and infrastructure for both
traditional and cloud applications Before joining
VMware, Simone worked at Apcera, a container
management platform, acquired by Ericsson He
has also held leadership, marketing and technical
presales roles at Cisco, Riverbed Technology,
Astute Networks and Andiamo Systems (later
acquired by Cisco)
Tom Scanlan is a Senior Consultant in the CNA/
DevOps and Emerging technologies arenas He
has 20 years experience across software
engineering, systems and networking
administration and consulting thereon Tom has
had deep focus on enabling DevOps and
multicloud architectures
An Introduction to Cloud-Native Technology | 7
Introduction
Digital transformation, the commoditization of IT, the Internet of things,
the proliferation of mobile devices, the growing popularity of public
clouds, big data, and other seismic technological changes are radically
altering the way businesses are run. Innovative software applications
are, for many businesses, a critical objective. Consumers, customers, and
keeping ahead of the competition demand it.
But one-time innovation is often not enough. The digital era calls for
continuous innovation at an accelerated pace—and the kind of modern-
ized data centers and software development technologies that make it
possible.
Container technology can help transform a company into a digital
enterprise focused on delivering innovations at the speed of business.
Containers package applications and their dependencies into a distribut-
able image that can run almost anywhere, streamlining the development
and deployment of software.
By adopting containers, organizations can take a vital step toward
remaking themselves into fexible, agile digital enterprises capable of
accelerating the delivery of innovative products, services, and customer
experiences. Enterprises can become the disrupters instead of the dis-
rupted.
But containers create technology management problems of their own,
especially when containerized applications need to be deployed and
managed at scale, and that’s when Kubernetes comes into play. Kuber-
netes automates the deployment and management of containerized
applications. More specifcally, Kubernetes orchestrates containerized
applications to manage and automate resource utilization, failure han-
dling, availability, confguration, desired state, and scalability.
This book introduces you to containers and Kubernetes, explains their
business value, explores their use cases, and illuminates how they can
accelerate your organization’s digital transformation.
Organization of this Book
The chapters at the beginning of the book explain the business value
container technology and examine how enterprises are modernizing their
data centers to take advantage of cloud-native innovations.
After briefy examining the architectural patterns, practices, processes,
and pipelines that help propel you toward digital transformation, the book
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considers the kind of infrastructure, virtualization technologies, systems,
and security required by next-generation data centers.
The chapters that follow become increasingly technical as they use two
key products from VMware—VMware vSphere Integrated Containers
and VMware Pivotal Container Service—to explain the architecture of
cloud-native applications, the capabilities of Kubernetes, and the use
cases for container technology.
The fnal sections of the book turn to examples that demonstrate how to
exploit the power of containers and Kubernetes to solve technical
problems.
Point of Departure:
Cloud-Native Terminology
Container technology comes with its own lexicon. If you’re familiar with
the basic terminology around containers, Kubernetes, and cloud-native
applications, you can skip this section. For plain-language descriptions of
terminology in the cloud-native space, see the glossary at the end of the
book.
Containers
Container: A portable format, known as an image, for packaging an
application with instructions on how to run it as well as an environment
in which the image is executed. When the container image is executed, it
runs as a process on a computer or virtual machine with its own isolated,
self-described application, fle system, and networking. A container is
more formally known as an application container. The use of containers
is increasing because they provide a portable, fexible, and predictable
way of packaging, distributing, modifying, testing, and running applica-
tions. Containers speed up software development and deployment.
Docker is a widely used container format. Docker defnes a standard
format for packaging and porting software, much like ISO containers
defne a standard for shipping freight. As a runtime instance of a Docker
image, a container consists of three parts:
• A Docker image
• An environment in which the image is executed
• A set of instructions for running the image
Containerized application: An application that has been packaged to run
in a container.
An Introduction to Cloud-Native Technology | 9
Kubernetes and Orchestration
Kubernetes: A system that automates the deployment and manage-
ment of containerized applications. As an application and its services
run in containers on a distributed cluster of virtual or physical machines,
Kubernetes manages all the moving pieces to optimize the use of com-
puting resources, to maintain the desired state, and to scale on demand.
On Kubernetes, a container (or a set of related containers) is deployed in
a logical unit called a pod. In addition to scheduling the deployment and
automating the management of containerized applications, a key bene-
ft of Kubernetes is that it maintains the desired state—the state that an
administrator specifes the application should be in.
Cluster: Three or more interconnected virtual machines or physical
computers that, in efect, form a single system. A computer in a cluster
is referred to as a node. An application running on a cluster is typically a
distributed application because it runs on multiple nodes. By inherently
providing high availability, fault tolerance, and scalability, clusters are a
key part of cloud computing.
Orchestration: Because it can automatically deploy, manage, and scale a
containerized application, Kubernetes is often referred to as an orches-
tration framework or an orchestration engine. It orchestrates resource
utilization, failure handling, availability, confguration,desired state, and
scalability.
Application Types and Architectural Patterns
Microservices: A “modern” architectural pattern for building an appli-
cation. A microservices architecture breaks up the functions of an
application into a set of small, discrete, decentralized, goal-oriented pro-
cesses, each of which can be independently developed, tested, deployed,
replaced, and scaled.
Cloud-native applications: Generally speaking, they are developed and
optimized to run in a cloud as distributed applications. According to the
Cloud Native Computing Foundation, cloud-native applications, which
are also generally referred to as “modern” applications, are marked by the
following characteristics:
• Containerized for reproducibility, transparency, and resource
isolation.
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