By George Trujillo,
Principal Data Strategist, DataStax
The agenda for KubeCon | CloudNativeCon - Oct 2022 in Detroit
highlights the expanding role of Kubernetes beyond application modernization
and into cloud, data, storage and networking strategies. Everyone is seeing the growth of Kubernetes.
For example, Gartner says Kubernetes' current adoption of ~30% will
continue to grow in 2022 and surpass 75%. What's often not so clear, is the
expansion of Kubernetes across technology stacks There is a lot of momentum to this growth due to the
benefits Kubernetes brings to additional technology areas. This article will use data as an example to
show how Kubernetes has become a growing wave of transformation across an
enterprise ecosystem.
A siloed approach for deployments
is not meeting the flexibility and speed needed in today's rapidly changing
environments. The components of an
ecosystem have to work together with the surrounding ecosystem. Kubernetes
orchestrated alignment for automation, reliability, resilience, CI/CD, unit
testing, modular construction and services are important for all areas of an
ecosystem.
Applications have an ecosystem
that includes data streams (message queues, event-streaming, pub-sub) and
databases. Applications feed data
streams that feed databases. If a
customer decides to move an application from on-premise to the cloud or to
multiple clouds, the data streams and databases the application feeds have to
move also. Software and data engineers
can work with SRE teams to align application, stream and database
deployments. For use cases where this
makes sense, deployment velocity is increased, complexity and errors are
reduced. This also helps build a culture
of cooperation and alignment across teams in executing to deliver business
outcomes. Kubernetes is a glue that
spans different areas of technology.
Kubernetes simplifies distributed
systems lifecycle management.
Kubernetes' strengths create a growing and natural progression of
aligning applications, data streams and databases. Kubernetes, applications and data are a
synergistic fit. Open source software
with Apache Pulsar and Apache Cassandra are leading the way with this.
- Apache Pulsar is a distributed and unified
queuing, pub/sub and streaming solution.
Pulsar's cloud-native architecture is a strong solution for
message-driven microservices and is easy to deploy using Kubernetes. Deploying Apache Pulsar in Kubernetes adds powerful features such as
resource-based scheduling and enforcement, rolling upgrades, and
well-integrated support for tools needed for a production deployment of Apache
Pulsar, such as Prometheus, Grafana, and cert-manager. Apache Pulsar is a first class citizen
with Kubernetes
and opens up great opportunities to align high growth applications with
real-time data strategies.
- Apache Cassandra, a cloud-native NoSQL
database, is also a natural fit for Kubernetes.
The Kubernetes and Cassandra communities have come together in a great
collaboration called K8ssandra, a production-ready platform that
makes it easy to run CassandraTM on Kubernetes.
Despite its growing popularity, Kubernetes is still a challenge. Kubernetes has many moving parts and
tools. It's important for Kubernetes to
start being looked at from an enterprise strategy perspective and not just
tactically at the project level. Now is
the time for different technology teams to start looking at consistent
standards and how to leverage Kubernetes across an ecosystem.
DevOps, DataOps, MLOps, PlatformOps, etc. can all learn, grow together
and help build a cross-functional culture of collaboration with
Kubernetes. Kubecon is an excellent
opportunity to dig deep into technical details and also to take a strategic
view of how Kubernetes can be leveraged across applications, cloud, data, storage and networking.
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To hear more about cloud native topics,
join the Cloud Native Computing
Foundation and the cloud native community at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2022 in Detroit
(and virtual) from October 24-28.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
George
Trujillo is a Data Strategist with DataStax. DataStax offers an open data
stack that enables enterprises to mobilize real-time data to build high-scale
data apps. As a data practitioner, George has led data modernization
initiatives as an enterprise architect, vice president and executive with all
data reporting to his office. George enjoys working with CDOs and data
executives on the modernization of real-time data strategy for enterprise data
ecosystems. Industry recognized expertise in data management. Known for
building high performance teams for data-value driven initiatives and
cloud-native cultures. Internationally recognized speaker and published author.