What Is A Cloud-Native Architecture?

What is a cloud-native architecture?

A cloud-native architecture is a design method for creating applications to fully leverage the benefits of cloud computing, including scalability.

These applications operate in a containerized environment (like Docker), where all the dependencies of an application are packaged together. This allows them flexibility in the type of environments they can run in and makes scaling, deployment, and testing easier.

Cloud-native applications are also generally architected as microservices, which are small, independent modules that communicate with each other through APIs. This enables rapid, frequent and reliable delivery of large, complex applications.

Lastly, cloud-native architectures use automated DevOps processes. When changes occur to a microservice, the processes of Integration (CI) and Deployment (CD) should be automated to minimize human intervention.

Technologies such as containers, microservices, immutable infrastructure, and declarative APIs exemplify this approach. The essence of cloud-native lies in an organization’s ability to innovate faster, adapt to changing needs, and scale more effectively, providing a reliable foundation for digital-native business models.

What is the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)?

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) is an open-source software foundation dedicated to making cloud-native computing universal and sustainable. It fosters the growth and development of a vibrant ecosystem of projects, including Kubernetes, Prometheus, and Envoy, that support scalable, flexible, and resilient cloud-native applications.

By providing governance, advocacy, and support for a broad range of projects, the CNCF aims to drive adoption of this technology paradigm, which emphasizes containerized services, microservices architectures, and DevOps practices, to improve the agility, efficiency, and portability of applications across various cloud environments.

What is a cloud-native application architecture?

A cloud-native application architecture is a design paradigm for building applications as a collection of small, independent, and loosely coupled services that are designed to deliver scalable and resilient software systems. This architecture leverages cloud environments to enhance flexibility, scalability, and reliability, enabling applications to dynamically scale resources up or down as demand changes.

This typically involves technologies such as containers, microservices, serverless functions, and declarative APIs, all orchestrated to work together in a highly automated environment. The goal is to take full advantage of cloud computing features to improve application performance, resilience, and agility.

What is cloud-native application development?

Cloud-native application development refers to the process of designing, building, and deploying applications specifically for cloud environments, utilizing practices and technologies that fully exploit the advantages of the cloud computing model. This development approach emphasizes automation, continuous delivery, microservices, containers, orchestration tools, and DevOps practices.

This aims to enhance the speed, scalability, and flexibility of application development and deployment processes, allowing businesses to respond more swiftly to market changes or customer needs. By focusing on cloud-native principles, developers can create applications that are inherently scalable, resilient, and manageable, leading to improved operational efficiency and reduced time to market.

What is cloud computing?

Cloud computing is a technology paradigm that provides on-demand access to shared pools of configurable computing resources (such as servers, storage, networks, services, and applications) over the Internet. It enables users to obtain and use computing capabilities as needed without the need for direct active management by the user.

Cloud computing models include public, private, and hybrid clouds, offering various services such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). The key benefits of cloud computing include scalability, flexibility, cost-efficiency, and accessibility, allowing businesses and individuals to leverage powerful computing resources and sophisticated applications without significant upfront investments in hardware or software.

The pillars of cloud-native architecture

The architecture of cloud-native systems is built on several foundational pillars that ensure applications are well-suited for the cloud environment. Each pillar represents a key aspect of the design and implementation process that contributes to the effectiveness and efficiency of cloud native applications.

Microservices

A microservices architecture breaks down applications into smaller, independently deployable services. Each service runs its own process and communicates with others through well-defined interfaces. This separation allows for easier scaling, improved resilience, and faster development and upgrade cycles.

Containers

Containers encapsulate an application and its dependencies into a single, portable unit. Running on a shared operating system kernel but in isolation from each other, containers ensure consistency across development, testing, and production environments. They enhance application scalability and streamline deployment processes.

DevOps and continuous delivery

The integration of DevOps practices and continuous delivery pipelines bridges the gap between development and operations teams. By automating the software delivery process, these practices enable frequent, reliable releases, fostering a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement.

Immutable infrastructure

Immutable infrastructure treats servers and other components as replaceable and disposable entities. Once deployed, these entities are not modified; instead, new instances are built from a common image and replaced. This approach leads to more predictable deployments and simplifies scaling and management.

Declarative APIs

Declarative APIs specify the desired state of a system or component, leaving the system to determine how to achieve that state. This approach allows for systems that are more manageable, can self-heal, and automatically adapt to configuration changes.

These pillars form the backbone of cloud native architecture, providing a robust framework for developing scalable, resilient, and efficient applications tailored for the cloud.

Core principles of cloud-native architecture

A cloud-native architecture is underpinned by several core principles that guide its design and operational philosophy. These principles not only define the approach to developing and managing applications but also ensure these applications leverage cloud environments to their fullest potential.

Automated and integrated CI/CD pipelines

Automation lies at the heart of cloud-native architecture, with continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines enabling rapid, reliable, and frequent code changes. These pipelines automate the process from code commit to production, ensuring that software can be reliably released at any time.

Scalability

Scalability is a fundamental principle, allowing applications to efficiently and automatically scale up or down based on demand. This elasticity is crucial for optimizing resource use and managing operational costs effectively.

Resilience

Designing for failure is a key aspect of cloud native architecture. Systems are built to be resilient, with practices such as redundancy, failover mechanisms, and graceful degradation ensuring that applications remain available and responsive, even in the face of failures.

Observability and monitoring

Comprehensive observability and monitoring are essential for understanding the behavior of cloud-native applications. Logging, tracing, and metrics collection provide insights into application performance and help in diagnosing issues, facilitating a proactive approach to maintenance and optimization.

Security

Security is integrated into the application lifecycle from the outset. Cloud-native security practices involve securing the infrastructure, application, and network layers, implementing automated security policies, and ensuring continuous security assessment and response.

Cloud native architecture patterns

A cloud native architecture employs a variety of patterns designed to address specific challenges associated with developing and operating applications in a cloud environment. These patterns are essential for achieving the scalability, resilience, and agility that cloud native systems are known for.

Service discovery

Service discovery allows services to find and communicate with each other in dynamic cloud environments. It supports the microservices architecture by enabling services to dynamically discover network locations of service instances, facilitating seamless interactions and communication.

API gateways

An API gateway acts as a single entry point for all client requests to the backend services. It simplifies the client interface, provides security measures like authentication and rate limiting, and decouples client applications from the backend services.

Circuit breakers

Circuit breakers prevent a network or service failure from cascading across other services. By monitoring for failures and temporarily halting operations if failures reach a certain threshold, circuit breakers help maintain system stability and resilience.

Containers and orchestration

Containers package applications and their runtime environment, making them portable and consistent across different computing environments. Orchestration tools like Kubernetes manage these containers, automating their deployment, scaling, and management.

Immutable infrastructure

Immutable infrastructure patterns involve replacing or rebuilding infrastructure components rather than modifying them. This approach reduces inconsistencies and potential security vulnerabilities, facilitating more reliable and predictable deployments.

Canaries and blue/green deployments

Canary deployments and blue/green deployments are patterns for releasing applications by gradually exposing new versions to a subset of users or by switching between two identical environments that host the new and old versions. These approaches allow teams to test new releases in production with minimal risk to stability.

What are cloud-native applications?

Cloud-native applications are built specifically for cloud environments, emphasizing flexibility, scalability, and resilience. Unlike traditional enterprise applications, which are monolithic and designed for specific on-premises hardware or data center deployments, cloud-native applications utilize microservices, containers, and DevOps practices.

This architecture allows for independent deployment and scaling of application components, enabling rapid iteration and improved fault tolerance. Cloud-native design leverages the cloud’s elasticity, allowing applications to adjust automatically to demand changes, thus offering significant advantages in innovation speed, operational efficiency, and cost reduction compared to traditional approaches.

How cloud native architecture differs from cloud-enabled

Cloud-native architecture and cloud-enabled architecture are two different approaches to using the cloud for web services and applications.

Cloud-enabled applications refer to traditional or legacy applications that have been modified to function on a cloud-based infrastructure. Essentially, these are applications that were not originally designed for the cloud but have been “lifted and shifted” to operate in a cloud environment. They take advantage of some benefits of cloud computing like decreased hardware costs and increased scalability, but they don’t generally provide the same level of flexibility and efficiency as cloud-native applications.

On the other hand, cloud-native architecture is designed and built specifically to take full advantage of the cloud computing model. Cloud-native applications are built from the ground up with the cloud in mind. They are typically composed of microservices that are packaged in containers, deployed as immutable infrastructure, and managed on an orchestration platform.

Nile Access Service represents the first and only cloud native wired and wireless enterprise networking solution in the market today. 

The microservices model allows each service to be developed, managed, and scaled individually, increasing agility and resilience. Cloud-native applications are also built with modern practices like continuous integration/delivery, CloudOps, and DevOps, making them more efficient and reducing time to market.

Benefits of a cloud-native architecture

A cloud native architecture offers numerous benefits that can transform how organizations build, deploy, and manage their applications. Here are some of the key advantages:

Enhanced scalability

Cloud-native applications are designed to scale seamlessly in response to fluctuating demand. By leveraging microservices and containers, these applications can easily scale out or in, allowing for efficient use of resources. This capability ensures that applications can handle peak loads without compromising performance or incurring unnecessary costs.

Improved resilience

The resilience of cloud-native applications is significantly higher than traditional applications. Through practices like automatic failover, replication, and self-healing, cloud native systems ensure high availability and maintain service continuity even during infrastructure failures. This approach minimizes downtime and maintains a consistent user experience.

Faster time to market

A cloud-native architecture accelerates the development lifecycle, enabling faster time to market for new features and applications. Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines automate the build, test, and deployment processes, reducing manual effort and speeding up release cycles. This agility allows businesses to rapidly respond to market changes and customer needs.

Cost efficiency

Adopting a cloud-native architecture leads to notable cost savings. By dynamically allocating resources based on actual usage rather than peak capacity predictions, organizations can optimize their spending on cloud resources. This pay-as-you-go model eliminates the need for overprovisioning and reduces waste, making IT spending more efficient and predictable.

Improved security

A cloud-native architecture integrates security throughout the application lifecycle, from design to deployment. By automating security policies and incorporating security checks into the CI/CD pipeline, organizations can ensure that security is a continuous priority. This proactive approach to security helps in identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities early, reducing the risk of breaches.

Operational flexibility

The operational flexibility offered by a cloud-native architecture allows organizations to deploy applications across various cloud environments, including public, private, and hybrid clouds. This flexibility enables businesses to choose the most appropriate environment for each application based on specific requirements, such as compliance, performance, and cost, ensuring optimal deployment strategies.

An enterprise cloud-native architecture with Nile

The Nile Access Service is uniquely positioned to help organizations navigate and overcome the challenges associated with a cloud-native architecture in a campus network environment. By providing scalable and secure network infrastructure and software built on cloud-native principles, the Nile Access Service enables organizations to manage the complexity of operating a network effectively.

And, with its zero trust campus security model and automated network management capabilities Nile reduces the security concerns inherent in distributed systems, ensuring that data and applications remain updated as needed across environments. By addressing these critical challenges and adapting the as a service software delivery principles that were born in the cloud, Nile Access Service empowers organizations to harness the full potential of cloud native architecture, driving efficiency, agility, and innovation.

Nile Access Service relieves enterprise IT departments from the burden of waiting on lengthy release cycles for fixes, new features and concerns related to monolithic software upgrades.

It offers a seamless network experience that aligns with your strategic business requirements, eliminates network complexity, shares the responsibility for IT team’s success with industry’s first performance guarantees backed by financial penalties, eliminates the need for up-front capital expenditures, and automates network lifecycle management with AI – providing superpowers to IT teams to get things done faster than ever before.

Discover how Nile can help you embrace cloud-native principles for your enterprise networks.