Why should you use cloud-native applications for system administration?

1 What are cloud-native applications?

Cloud-native applications are applications that are built and deployed using cloud computing principles and technologies. They are composed of loosely coupled microservices that communicate through APIs, and they run on containers or serverless functions that are orchestrated by platforms like Kubernetes or AWS Lambda. Cloud-native applications are designed to be portable, scalable, resilient, and adaptable to changing needs and environments.

3 What are the advantages of cloud-native applications for system administration?

Cloud-native applications can be cost-effective, improve performance, enhance security, and increase flexibility for system administration. Using pay-as-you-go models, optimizing resource utilization, and automating tasks and workflows can reduce costs of infrastructure, maintenance, and operations. Additionally, load balancing, caching, and autoscaling techniques can improve the performance of the system and enable faster and more frequent delivery of features and updates. Security is also improved by using encryption, authentication, authorization, and auditing mechanisms to isolate and protect sensitive data and services. Finally, cloud-native applications allow you to choose the best tools and technologies for each component and function, as well as to adapt to changing requirements and environments.

4 How can you get started with cloud-native applications for system administration?

If you want to get started with cloud-native applications for system administration, you will need to learn some basic concepts and skills, such as cloud computing, microservices, containers, serverless, and orchestration. For cloud computing, you should be aware of the different types of cloud services and how to use them for system administration. With microservices, you should understand how to design, develop, and deploy applications as a collection of independent and interoperable microservices that communicate through APIs, and manage their lifecycle and dependencies. Regarding containers, you should know how to package and run applications as isolated and lightweight containers that share the same operating system, as well as use tools like Docker and Podman for container management. Additionally, you should be familiar with running applications as ephemeral and event-driven functions that are executed by cloud platforms on demand, and use tools like AWS Lambda and Google Cloud Functions for serverless computing. Lastly, you need to understand how to coordinate and automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containers and serverless functions across multiple nodes and clusters using tools like Kubernetes and OpenShift for orchestration.

5 What are some examples of cloud-native applications for system administration?

Cloud-native applications are the future of system administration, offering many benefits and opportunities for improving performance, efficiency, security, and flexibility. Examples include Prometheus, Grafana, and Elastic Stack for monitoring; Ansible, Puppet, and Chef for configuration management; Velero, Restic, and Duplicati for backup and recovery; and Vault, Keycloak, and Open Policy Agent for security. By learning and using cloud-native applications, you can take advantage of the cloud computing paradigm and stay ahead of the curve in your field. Collecting, analyzing, visualizing metrics, logs, and alerts; automating configuration and provisioning; backing up and restoring data; securing access and data; enforcing policies—cloud-native applications can help with all these system administration tasks and workflows.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?