Cloud native on nLive: Nebula Graph on the cloud

This article was first published on the Nebula Graph Community public account

In the #cloudnative# topic sharing, Cloud expert Qiao Lei from the Nebula cloud group shared cloud-related knowledge with you. This article is compiled from the topic live broadcast .

What is cloud native

Here is a brief introduction to what cloud native is, including what is DBaaS? What level is it in the entire cloud system?

In essence, cloud native is an evolving technology concept. At the beginning, the concept of cloud native did not exist. It evolved from the early virtualized VM to containerization, and then to today's FaaS, and gradually developed into a set of systematic things. In other words, cloud native is a complete set of technologies built by packaging infrastructure together, and this set of technologies is constantly extending to the periphery. You can see the picture of the cloud native pyramid. The IaaS layer provides storage, computing, network, security firewall and other products based on hardware virtualization; the upper layer is the CaaS layer, which provides containerized products based on the Kubernetes orchestration system; the top layer is based on cloud native concepts The built application service, the whole combination constitutes the cloud native conceptual system.

A certain technology must serve a certain business, so we need to understand, what does cloud native ultimately serve? Cloud native hopes to better decouple the business from the infrastructure, so that everyone can focus more on business-level development without having to care about operation and maintenance operations, such as: insufficient machine resources; when traffic bursts, expand resources; traffic peaks Scaling down after the period expires... These common operation and maintenance operations can be deposited into the entire infrastructure system.

What is DBaaS

DBaaS is a concept that relies on the cloud native technology system, that is, Database as a Service. The idea of DBaaS is to scale the stand-alone database application technology we understand, making it simpler and lighter to use, allowing users to feel out-of-the-box and ready-to-go. Although users can leave when they run out, the operation of the DBaaS platform also relies on this cloud-native system, so we can build DBaaS on the PaaS layer, and use container-related technologies to make the database have the ability to be fast and elastic, and use hardware Virtualization technology to improve the performance of the database, these technologies are used in combination as the base of the DBaaS platform.

Nebula Graph Cloud

The following combines the DBaaS products of Nebula Graph to intuitively explain what a DBaaS platform should look like.

The above picture shows the architecture of the DBaaS platform. User roles are divided into cloud users, operators, operation and maintenance personnel, and developers. The DBaaS platform is aimed at many types of people, not only for cloud users, but also for operators and development and operation and maintenance personnel. The platform presents different views for different user roles.
For example, after a cloud user clicks and selects an instance of the required specification through a simple operation, there will be a complete set of pipeline jobs to create the instance and initialize the configuration. After the instance is ready, the user can log in to the Portal to perform graph exploration and graph query operations, but the instance How to create, how to expand the capacity of nodes, and how to back up data is insensitive to users. This also reflects a very important point in the concept of DBaaS. The database application is separated from the infrastructure through the DBaaS platform. Users pay attention to the operation at the database level as much as possible, and complex tasks such as database operation and maintenance management are all completed by the DBaaS service provider. In this way, it will be more convenient for users to use Nebula Graph.

Nebula Graph Cloud instance

The above picture shows the view that can be viewed by logging in after the Nebula Graph instance is created. In the menu bar on the left, you can perform database-level operations on the created instance, such as permission management or user management.
On the [Applications] page shown in the figure above, the page lists three products that are familiar to community users: Nebula Studio, Nebula Dashboard, and Nebula Explorer. Click [Open] in the above figure to log in to the corresponding application connection graph database. to operate.

If you want to use Nebula Graph in a more concise way similar to a terminal, we have connected the VLink of Azure in the Connectivity interface, and you can feel the experience of a direct terminal connection.

Applications of Nebula Graph Cloud

It can be intuitively felt that there is no difference in experience between using Nebula Explorer on the cloud and deploying a set of visual Nebula Explorer components locally.

The picture above shows the monitoring data dashboard displayed by another visualization product, Nebula Dashboard. You can see the machine status of the entire cluster through the data dashboard. You can also perform simple operation and maintenance operation management based on Nebula Dashboard.

Operators behind Nebula Graph Cloud

The entire Nebula Graph Cloud system is implemented based on the K8s ecosystem, and database products are managed through the Nebula Operator. The following functions are supported:

• Instance creation and deletion
• Instance scaling up and down
• Instance rolling upgrade
• Instance backup and recovery (in development)
• Instance monitoring and alerting
• Instance fault self-healing
• Instance log view
• Instance configuration parameter changes

Based on the above product planning, the deployment and upgrade problems that operation and maintenance personnel may encounter can be solved, such as: Nebula Graph is installed through the rpm package, but the startup fails after modifying the configuration file, and the log location problem needs to be found; the database version of a certain machine is too low. Upgrading the version... is done automatically by the Nebula Operator, saving O&M manpower. Currently, both Nebula Graph Cloud and Nebula Operator are in continuous iteration. If you have other product suggestions, you can go to: https://discuss.nebula-graph.com.cn/ to communicate with us.

The infrastructure behind Nebula Graph Cloud

In order to automate the creation, configuration and assembly of cloud resources such as cloud servers and networks, infrastructure and code (IaC) tools are used. Not only Terraform shown in the picture above, but every cloud vendor provides corresponding products. Like Azure's ARM template, AWS's Cloud information, but the template language of each cloud vendor is not a general language, but a DSL-like language. If you want to connect to multiple clouds, you can use Terraform to define a set of job flow templates. After initializing the infrastructure, you can build a DBaaS platform based on this.

Cloud communication for community users

Here are some excerpted questions from community users. You can watch the video: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1rR4y1T73V or the video at the end of the article to view all the interactive questions.

What problem does Nebula Graph Cloud solve

The Nebula Graph Cloud that I am meeting with you is actually a DBaaS platform, which adopts a fully managed model. Users subscribe to services in the cloud market (currently Azure) through simple configuration. DBaaS users create a complete set of database products for users, and users can log in to their accounts. Use the graph database Nebula Graph. In the future plan, semi-managed products will be launched, that is, users can select the Nebula template officially provided by Nebula under the nearest cloud tenant. The template provides relevant database configuration parameters, and the corresponding graph, storage, and meta nodes are created through the parameters. , all relevant data is owned by the user and can be managed.

In general, Nebula Graph Cloud shields operations unrelated to business, focuses on business-level development, and hands over tedious deployment, operation and maintenance work to Nebula Graph Cloud for implementation.

How Nebula Graph Cloud charges

You need to choose according to your usage. If you use the OP method, you can ask business students how to purchase a license; if you choose the out-of-the-box method and have an Azure account, you can access Azure's MarketPlace subscription products. Currently, Azure Nebula Graph Cloud 30% off: https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps/vesoftcompanylimited1625556994617.nebula_graph_cloud?tab=Overview

Future plans for Nebula Graph Cloud

Before the end of this year, we will connect with cloud vendors that are familiar to everyone in China, such as Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Huawei Cloud, etc. Overseas, we will also strive to launch Nebula Graph Cloud on AWS.

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