Cloud Native Infrastructure

Chapter 9. Implementing Cloud Native Infrastructure

If you thought cloud native infrastructure was a product you could buy or a cloud provider where you could run your servers, we are sorry to disappoint. It is not something you can benefit from without adopting the practices and changing how you build and maintain infrastructure.

It impacts much more than just servers, network, and storage. It is about how engineers manage applications just as much as it is about embracing failure.

A culture built around cloud native practices is very different from traditional technology and engineering organizations. We are not experts in addressing organizational cultures or structures, but if you’re looking to transform your organization, we suggest looking at values and lessons from implementing DevOps practices in high-performing organizations.

Some places to explore are Netflix’s culture deck, which promotes freedom and responsibility, and Amazon’s two-pizza teams, which promote autonomous groups with low overhead. Cloud native applications need to have the same decoupled characteristics as the teams that built them. Conway’s law describes it best: “organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.”¹

As we close out this book, we’d like to focus on what areas are the most important as you adopt cloud native practices. We’ll also discuss some of the patterns in infrastructure that are predictors ...