Continuous Delivery - DevOps (Hybrid cloud) Architecture
When the question of scalability and customization hangs in the balance, DevOps have always presented various solutions and has come to rescue. The same thing is happening today in our cloud native environments where all the heavy lifting is done by DevOps infrastructure. DevOps, as you might know, is a collection of development and operations side of things with nothing but a small margin dividing the boundaries.
There are various sets of tools and software systems which collectively make various possibilities predicted by DevOps come true. But here we will be talking about a specific element of DevOps which is continuous delivery and its effects on our cloud hybrid environment. An Introduction to Kubernetes using Docker is extremely important when trying to learn new concepts of DevOps with cloud based systems.
Modern technologies and infrastructure continues to grow rich in putting forth its concise but technologically stable architectures and these systems combined are making a great impact on continuous delivery. Being a cloud engineer or a DevOps professional you must be familiar with the importance of continuous delivery and what it can help the organization achieve.
For those who are new let's elaborate it a little. First of all, continuous delivery is a set of practices and tools which provides you with a platform where the testing and release of changes around various server systems having different code integrations can be done. Continuous delivery on its own has several working pieces that complete this puzzle and the most obvious choices for these applications would have to be container-based systems called docker, an the orchestration program which enables automation including Kubernetes.
Issues with continuous delivery on a hybrid cloud environment
Even if everything mentioned here strike you as perfect, there are a few concerns that keep emerging up before the professionals. The first one here is the very dead continuous delivery tools used within an organization, too complex to be used in a hybrid cloud intensive environment. The second one is a cry for help regarding release management.
The mechanism of continuous delivery would bring into account the use of continuous integration, testing and finally the implementation of the code using specified pipelines. The current applications which are being developed today or written in Java or any other programming language and a mix of several other working elements is thrown into it to provide with the structure and architecture.
Yet the truth is that all these instances are running in virtual machines and various parts of this misnomer can actually be prepared separately with the help of continuous integration of code. what is continuous integration? Well, it is nothing but elongation of continuous delivery but due to these integration practices the overall code for the applications couldn't stay intact.
It's the same like solving a Rubik's cube, as you continue to shuffle code to make things stand up in order dissolving any vulnerabilities that exist in a particular section, the other side of the code is going to get damaged because it's going to change. This is where the concept of continuous delivery can actually thrive, instead of continually integrating the code and then implementing it right away, a different approach can be used.
The newly integrated code can be funneled down to test environments where its integrity, stability and detailed analysis such as how it would mix well with the rest of the gold can be done. It would tell us whether or not the code is accurate or even if it could be implemented any further. So, the simple understanding would be that continuous integration builds your stuff and the automated tools working under the realm of continuous delivery take control of code implementation.
Why continuous delivery is changing for cloud hybrid environment?
When the same scenario is shifted the worst cloud native applications, a whole Pandora box, is let open, because the world of cloud is so large and bold that services can't be stationed at particular intervals for the sake of continuous integration. Everything needs to happen in a continuous fashion because changing and testing individual resources and then automating it is not only expensive but also slows down the process of automation.
What needs to be done here is to allot dedicated resources to these cloud intensive applications, doing so would make sure that the service can be tested instantly with minimal or no impact on other services thus making sure the integrity of code and the cloud architecture remains unaltered.
By doing so not only these services be properly tested but also a dedicated track of these interrelated services can be kept to know where the vulnerability existed or what needs to be done to make sure that final implementations reach the customers in an abrupt fashion. Using the concept of continuous delivery within the cloud boundaries you are not stuck with a single application or tool at hand, you can literally use any type of tool you may see fit such as various cloud infrastructure use Jenkins to build pipelines and secure a fast delivery of applications to the customers.
Drawing the picture while using continuous delivery with a cloud intensive environment, one can only guess that it might be possible for a cloud native team to have dissected the problems that existed while implementing applications via hybrid cloud systems. Once those were pointed out this team of engineers came up with the idea of DevOps in its pioneer form which was later brought to be introduced before the whole world. Whatever we might have achieved there is still a need for an increase within coordination for the building of different pipelines. This need should be met to make sure that not only everything is up to speed but there are also no communication related boundaries whatsoever.
The GCP DevOps course can also help you if you are a beginner and want to lean about various dissections of DevOps and continuous delivery and how to properly manage it with the cloud.