How your application is architected and developed impacts how easily it can scale up and down, being portable or maintainable.
As we see in traditional architectures, scaling is complex, slow and prone to failure. This makes it hard to respond quickly to changing demands.
So, having a Cloud Native architecture becomes more crucial each day.
Reading time 14 minutes Published: 18 October 2024
In this article, we discuss what a Cloud Native architecture is and more:
Let’s dive in!
Cloud Native architecture is a structural approach for designing and building an environment for your software development and deployment that uses resources and processes typically associated with public clouds – such as Microsoft Azure.
However, a Cloud Native architecture can also be implemented in a hybrid or private cloud.
“Cloud Native is not where it is built, but rather how.”
This architectural approach integrates software containers, loosely coupled microservices, immutable infrastructure and declarative APIs to build a scalable, flexible environment.
Cloud Native Architecture is crucial because it removes the traditional constraints of infrastructure management.
Moving towards Cloud Native frees you of the many layers of infrastructure (networks, servers, operating systems, etc.). Instead, they can be defined in code. You can spin up and down anytime as much infrastructure as you need by running a script. This way, businesses can focus on delivering more value to their customers.
By automating and streamlining everything outside the core application, developers only need to think about orchestrating the required infrastructure and the application code.
In a monolithic application, everything (the user interface, business logic and data storage) are tightly coupled and run as one unit. This makes it harder to scale and update the app.
Changing one area can affect the entire application when an application is tightly coupled. Even small changes require redeploying the whole system, which can cause downtime and errors.
In contrast, Cloud Native architecture breaks the application into independent, loosely coupled microservices that can be developed, deployed and scaled independently. This modularity allows for more flexibility, as teams can update or scale individual services independently.
Cloud Native architectures also take full advantage of the cloud’s scalability, resilience, and automation, so you can handle dynamic workloads and be available continuously.
A Cloud Native achitecture is made up of small parts working together. Here, you can modify, add or replace individual parts without affecting the whole system.
It consists of 4 main components:
To fully understand it, we need to look at each component in detail.
Containers are part of the foundation of Cloud Native systems. These self-contained, portable operating environments bundle an application’s code with all the dependencies needed to run middleware and frameworks.
While doing so, it ensures consistency across different environments. Your team can spin up and shut down containers quickly or store them in container registries so they are easily deployable.
Tools like Kubernetes are used to manage and orchestrate containers so businesses can run applications at scale.
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Yes, sign me up for the AKS workshopIn a Cloud Native Architecture, we see microservices (loosely coupled lightweight services) that break down applications into smaller, independent and deployable services.
These services communicate using lightweight protocols like HTTP or application program interfaces (APIs). Since each tiny service serves a different function, you can develop, deploy and scale them independently.
Unlike monolithic systems, microservices allow teams to update, deploy, or fix individual parts without affecting the whole application. This prevents disruptions. This modularity is why we can have:
In Cloud Native architectures, infrastructure components like servers are immutable. In other words, once deployed, they are not modified. If an update is needed, a new version of the server or component is built and deployed, and the old one is decommissioned.
This reduces potential errors or inconsistencies due to configuration drift during deployment and rollbacks. Besides, it improves your protection against attacks.
APIs shift the complexity of building and configuring APIs from the user to the system.
These APIs simplify deployment by letting the system handle the complexity. Instead of manually configuring every detail, the user defines the desired outcome. The system then automatically dictates the best way to achieve it, reducing both deployment times and the risk of errors.
Some may argue that service meshes also form part of the architecture.
A service mesh is an infrastructure layer that monitors the microservices architecture and manages the communication between different microservices to enhance performance, security and observability (of traffic).
While not always required, it may be beneficial in complex environments with multiple microservices that interact frequently.
It is also useful for controlling which services can communicate with each other and for encrypting traffic (using certificates).
Also, it can be helpful if you need features like inter-service, load balancing or observability.
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It’s crucial to design for automation when creating an architecture. This means we should create code and infrastructure to automate and manage using software tools easily so we can provision resources fast and consistently across the infrastructure.
Imagine: you are building an e-commerce platform with tons of product data. In the traditional infrastructure era, you would’ve had to provision a server manually, then install the software and configure the database to store the data – which felt like a never-ending process with an open door for errors.
In a Cloud Native Architecture, tools like Bicep – a domain-specific language (DSL) with declarative syntax – automate the deployment of Azure resources, offering concise syntax, reliable type safety, and code reuse. This enables consistent and scalable infrastructure deployments across environments.
Regarding automation, Cloud Native also means the entire application lifecycle. Think about creating continuous integration (CI), continuous development (CD) pipelines, GitOps workflows, auto-scaling and self-healing systems.
By designing for automation we can:
Stateless applications are a crucial principle and encourage change. They are much more convenient when it comes to scaling, repairing, rolling back and balancing.
On the contrary, stateful applications that manage and store data directly can be quite risky and complex. In stateful applications, when a stateful microservice fails, it loses its state, potentially disrupting your entire system. But what does it mean for an application to be stateless?
Let’s start by defining state: the state is how an app defines the state for a user.
In an e-commerce shop, the state can be:
In a stateless architecture, the state is decoupled from the application instance, making the system more robust, flexible and scalable.
Let’s elaborate on this with an example: Imagine you are shopping online and adding items to your wishlist. In a stateful architecture, if the server crashes while you curate your wishlist, your added items could be lost, and you’d have to start over again.
In a stateless architecture, the wishlist data is stored in a centralised location -like a cache or a managed database (PaaS). If the server crashes or the user logs in from another device, their wishlist will be intact and available, and the experience will be seamless even if the server is down.
When a stateless microservice fails you can restart it and it will pick up where it left off without losing any data because the service doesn’t store session or state information internally. Instead, the microservice retrieves the state from the external database or cache.
We can compare it to watching a movie on Netflix.
Each time you start watching, Netflix only needs to remember how far along you are. If something goes wrong, you can restart it, and it picks up exactly where you left off.
Traditionally, security relied on perimeter-based strategies, focusing on protecting the outer layer of the network with firewalls and similar tools. But Cloud Native applications are distributed and operate across multiple environments. Thus, a more comprehensive, multi-layered approach to security is required.
That’s where defence in-depth arrives, which makes the system more resilient and easier deployable. Defence in depth is the practice of using several layers of security to protect your applications and data.
For example, you can implement defence in depth at multiple layers:
Having different security controls working at various points in your system ensures that even if one layer is compromised, the other layers are still there to keep your application secure. Read more about Cloud Native security.
In the old days, setting up an IT infrastructure or maintaining it was very complex and time-consuming. You needed to physically order and install the servers and configure networks – which took days or weeks. And that’s not all; you had to handle all the upkeep yourself, which was both expensive and labour-intensive.
Nowadays, cloud providers ease that pain by offering managed services. These enable businesses to consume resources without the burden of managing licensing, provisioning and maintenance.
And you don’t have to worry anymore about underlying infrastructure as the cloud providers take on this responsibility (shared responsibility). So you can focus on building and running your application and creating business value for your clients rather than dealing with infrastructure.
Cloud Native applications are designed to scale up or down based on the user’s demand automatically. They are elastic and can handle varying loads efficiently to optimise resource usage and cost.
Whereas traditional infrastructure requires fixed hardware or software resources, Cloud Native applications can take advantage of the elasticity of the cloud by using increased resources during spikes.
In a Cloud Native Architecture, you can also scale functional areas of our application to your needs. Doing so, you can ensure that you’re never running excess capacity and that you can easily access more resources should demand suddenly jump.
This would not have been possible if you’d run your own data centre, as you’d have to ensure you have enough server capacity to cope on demanding days. And during calmer days, you’d run at most likely a high price.
One of the core principles of Cloud Native is Agile DevOps, specifically CI and CD. This allows development and operations teams to work together to speed up the software delivery process.
With CI/CD pipelines, code changes are automatically tested, integrated and deployed to production environments without human intervention. This means faster updates, higher quality releases and quicker issue response.
Automating testing and deployment, and infrastructure changes through CI/CD and GitOps allows teams to have a rapid release cycle and reduce human error. GitOps defines the infrastructure’s desired state declaratively (as IaC) and ensures consistency and immutability. This is essential for Cloud Native environments that require scalability, flexibility and resilience.
First and foremost: security. In a Cloud Native Architecture, we design our structure with security at the top of our minds – directly from the start.
Herein, we apply the Zero Trust paradigm, which assumes no part of the system is automatically trusted, whether inside or outside the network.
This continuously verifies the identity and integrity of users, devices, and systems at every access point.
Next up, we have got flexibility. The Cloud Native approach gives us enhanced flexibility for updating and modifying applications to changing customer demands.
This is due to building those applications using modern tools and techniques that support app development for cloud infrastructures.
A significant advantage of Cloud Native architectures is the ability to scale seamlessly. Traditional applications often face limitations when trying to scale.
Cloud Native provides pay-as-you-go and on-demand access to various tools and infrastructure. This is all without upfront costs. In traditional environments, systems must always be on to serve customers.
But with the cloud, you can shift your focus towards innovation and less on maintenance. Moving to the cloud can reduce downtime risks. It is more reliable and can handle outages. This protects your reputation and lowers costs.
Cloud Native applications are designed to be resilient. In other words, if somewhere in the system, an unexpected event occurs, such as a failure or disruption, they can still function. Moreover, they are designed to recover from failures, ensuring continuous high availability automatically.
The portability of containerised microservices ensures that an organisation isn't overly reliant on just one cloud provider. This offers greater flexibility and reduces lock-in at cloud vendors.
Using loosely coupled services instead of an enterprise tech stack lets dev teams choose the best framework, language, or system for their project's goals.
Since microservices operate independently, developers can optimise each microservice based on core functionality. This leads to a more refined and enriched end-user experience.
Using microservices in software development facilitates CI and CD efforts. This reduces the development lifecycle and minimises the human error rate. Container orchestrators can automatically schedule and allocate resources based on demand to increase efficiency.
Modern Cloud Native application architecture also enables faster development cycles through continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD). Companies can release updates more frequently and confidently, driving innovation and quickly responding to customer feedback.
Microservices in app architecture let developers change or add a service. They can do this without affecting the whole app or its availability.
An open-source container orchestration platform, like Kubernetes, eases troubleshooting. It helps find the container with a bug or problem without dismantling the whole app.
Read more about how we help organisations like yours become (more) Cloud Native.
Cloud Native by InterceptAlthough implementing a Cloud Native Architecture offers a variety of benefits, the road has its share of challenges.
Cloud Native applications are more complex than monolithic apps. Managing multiple microservices, communication and data consistency can be challenging. Plus, orchestrating containers adds operational complexity and requires advanced monitoring tools and infrastructure expertise.
In traditional architecture, issues are found along a linear path. The path is sometimes unclear in a cloud environment as containers interact and connect. Finding the issue becomes more complex if the problem is in one or more containers.
Automated updates and isolation with Cloud Native Architecture means you’re more secure. But new risks and attack surfaces come with microservices and more inter-service communication.
DevOps is a great, efficient way of software development. But it comes with its own complexities which are sometimes hard to implement. Especially for organisations that aren’t fully agile yet, a cultural shift and a lot of training is required to get Dev and Ops teams working together and adopting Cloud Native architectures.
Monitoring and logging get more complicated in this architecture because of the microservices. Instead of one system to track, you need to monitor multiple services and aggregate logs from various sources. Visibility across all services requires advanced tools to detect and act.
Moving to Cloud Native requires expertise in microservices, container orchestration and tools like Kubernetes. Teams will need to go through a lot of training to manage the complexity of Cloud Native systems, which will slow down adoption and create operational challenges until those skills are developed.
Cloud Native architecture provides a great way to build and run applications that are flexible, scalable and resilient.
With this architecture, you’ll be ready for growing demands. You’ll be able to release updates smoothly and keep your systems running and reliable. Whether you want to add to existing offerings or new products, cloud native is the way to stay agile and ready for whatever comes next.
We hope you’ve now got a clearer view on this topic.
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