ITNEXT: "This project may change the way we use Kubernetes"

About unknowingly, the last quarter of 2021 is approaching quietly. The one-year summary of technologies in major hot fields, future judgments, and inventory of tools will not be unexpectedly the focus of the industry again. Recently, ITNEXT, a well-known overseas technology media, released the content of the annual cloud-native technology ranking "Kubernetes Essential Tools: 2021". Among them, the KubeVela project from Alibaba Cloud is on the list, becoming the only open source project led by Chinese developers in this list of "2021 Kubernetes Essential Tools".

Author | KubeVela Community

background

Unconsciously, the last quarter of 2021 is approaching quietly. The one-year summary of technologies in major hot fields, future judgments, and inventory of tools will not be unexpectedly the focus of the industry again. Recently, well-known overseas technology media ITNEXT released the content of the annual cloud native technology ranking "Kubernetes Essential Tools: 2021". Among them, the KubeVela project from Alibaba Cloud is on the list, becoming the only open source project led by Chinese developers in this list of "2021 Kubernetes Essential Tools".

This project will change the way we use Kubernetes

In this list, the author used a considerable amount of space to introduce KubeVela. He mentioned:

"One of the current problems with Kubernetes is that developers need to know the details of infrastructure and clusters very well. Many people are discussing the problem of the low level of abstraction of K8s, which will bring developers who only want to focus on writing and delivering applications. A lot of trouble. The Open Application Model (OAM) was created to solve this problem. Its core idea is to create a higher level of abstraction around the application in a way that is independent of the underlying infrastructure. Read the specification: https://github.com/oam-dev/spec

It is precisely because it focuses on applications rather than containers or orchestration, the Open Application Model (OAM) brings modular, extensible, and portable design to application developers, enabling them to use higher-level but consistent APIs for applications Model delivery and management. "

As the standard implementation of the OAM model, KubeVela is not only related to the underlying infrastructure and independent, natively scalable, but most importantly, it is completely application-centric. In KubeVela, "applications" are designed as "first-class citizens" of the entire platform. The application team only needs to focus on several cross-platform and cross-environmental upper-level abstractions such as components, operation and maintenance features, and workflows to deliver and manage applications without paying attention to any infrastructure details and differences; platform administrators can always use The IaC method configures features such as component types and operation and maintenance capability sets supported by the platform to adapt to any application hosting scenario.

• Application team: select a target environment, use components and characteristics to describe the application as needed, and then deliver it to the target environment
• Platform team: Modular and template management and modeling of the functions supported by the platform

Finally, ITNEXT concluded: “The KubeVela project will change the way we use Kubernetes in the near future, and ultimately enable developers to enjoy the efficiency and convenience brought by cloud native without becoming Kubernetes experts. Of course, the OAM model is in reality. The world may encounter new challenges. For example, some system-level programs may be tightly coupled with the details of the underlying infrastructure. Such problems need to be further resolved in KubeVela."

defines the next-generation cloud-native application management platform

The KubeVela project has been widely followed by the community since its release. On the day of open source, it was listed at the top of the Go language area on the GitHub trend list; at the end of 2020, it was selected as "Top Cloud Native Technology Trends from 2020" by the well-known technology media TheNewStack; it was also InfoQ The only open source project from China in the International Station "Software Architecture and Design Trends Report"; in May 2021, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and more than 10 organizations jointly released the "Cloud Computing Open Application Architecture Standard" based on OAM. . Today, more than 100 contributors are active in the KubeVela community and are used in production environments by more than 20 leading domestic and foreign companies. Oracle Cloud has also officially released an enterprise-level hybrid cloud application platform product based on OAM.

An Up host active in the DevOps circle on Youtube commented on KubeVela:

"We will try and wait, and time will prove everything. If any technology may become a trend and become a standard way to define applications, it is the Open Application Model (OAM) and the implementation of this model KubeVela."

Video address: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2CBu6sOTtwk

Regarding the future of the KubeVela project, Zhang Lei, a member of the CNCF Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) and senior technical expert of Alibaba Cloud, once made this interpretation:

"After the cloud-native and Kubernetes projects have greatly unified and standardized the infrastructure layer abstraction, a standardized, universal but highly scalable upper-level application delivery and management platform has emerged on top of this, which is becoming today’s The most important trend in the industry".

KubeVela's recent roadmap

Currently KubeVela mainly has three types of typical usage scenarios, including:

• SaaS software cloud delivery and hosting;
• Application PaaS for hybrid cloud/distributed cloud;
• DevOps platform for hybrid environments, including multi-cluster/multi-environment CD systems, etc.

Not long ago, the OAM and KubeVela projects as a whole donated to the CNCF Sandbox of the Cloud Native Foundation, and announced the main plans for the near-term development of the project:

• The Helm, Kustomize and Terraform components have been further improved, and the model layer has been further upgraded to ensure that KubeVela can "deliver everything" in design and implementation.
• Added system addon mode, such as Kubernetes cluster, system add-on, public service (Load Balancer, VPC, DB) and other deployment environments to pull up and maintain.
• Further improve the Workflow capability of the application release process, allowing users to define process-oriented operation and maintenance commands. Part of the operation and maintenance capabilities will also be transformed in accordance with the Workflow direction, including grayscale upgrades, traffic management, and multi-cluster distribution strategies.
• New features such as configuration differentiation and data transfer for cross-environment deployment.
• Improve the pluggability of Workflow, users can use their own capabilities (such as: grayscale release) to add or replace any step in Workflow.
• KubeVela is installed in standalone mode, that is, KubeVela can be run in a single Docker container/VM.
• More integration cases with CI/CD system, etc.

It is reported that KubeVela v1.1.0, which includes the above key features, is currently being tested in the community and will be officially released soon, let us wait and see!

If you are also interested in KubeVela, welcome to join us (Dingding search group number 23310022):

more content

2021 Kubernetes essential tools

link to the original text: _ https://itnext.io/kubernetes-essential-tools-2021-def12e84c572 _

Click directly to KubeVela official website: https://kubevela.io/

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