Cloud Native

Chapter 2. Fundamentals

As discussed in Chapter 1, cloud native applications are applications that are distributed in nature and utilize cloud infrastructure. There are many technologies and tools that are being used to implement cloud native applications, but from a compute perspective, it is mainly functions and containers. From an architectural perspective, microservices architectures have gained a lot of popularity. More often than not, those terms are mistakenly used, and often believed to be one and the same. In reality, functions and containers are different technologies, each serving a particular purpose, whereas microservices describes an architectural style. That said, understanding how to best use functions and containers, along with eventing or messaging technologies, allows developers to design, develop, and operate a new generation of cloud native microservices-based applications in the most efficient and agile way. To make the correct architectural decisions to design those types of applications, it is important to understand the basics of the underlying terms and technologies. This chapter explains important technologies used with cloud native applications and concludes by providing an overview of the microservices architectural style.

Containers

Initially, containers were brought into the spotlight by startups and born-in-the-cloud companies, but over the past couple of years, containers have become synonymous with application modernization. Today there are very ...