Glossary of terms

Cloud-native

Definition of Cloud-native

Cloud-native refers to an approach in software development and deployment that fully leverages the advantages of cloud computing platforms and technologies. It involves designing, building, and operating applications that are specifically created to run in cloud environments, taking full advantage of the cloud’s scalability, flexibility, and resilience.

Main features of Cloud-native

1. Microservices architecture: Applications are broken down into smaller, loosely coupled services that can be developed, deployed, and scaled independently.

2. Containerization: Applications and their dependencies are packaged into containers, ensuring consistency across different environments and enabling easier deployment and scaling.

3. Dynamic orchestration: Container orchestration tools like Kubernetes are used to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

4. DevOps practices: Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines are implemented to automate testing, building, and deploying applications.

5. Declarative APIs: Infrastructure and application configurations are defined using declarative APIs, allowing for version control and automated management.

6. Scalability and elasticity: Applications can automatically scale up or down based on demand, optimizing resource utilization and costs.

7. Resilience and self-healing: Systems are designed to be fault-tolerant, with the ability to recover from failures automatically.

8. Observability: Comprehensive monitoring, logging, and tracing capabilities are built into applications to provide insights into performance and behavior.

Scope of Cloud-native

1. Application development: Cloud-native principles influence how applications are designed, developed, and structured, promoting modularity and scalability.

2. Infrastructure management: Cloud-native approaches extend to how infrastructure is provisioned, managed, and scaled, often using Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) techniques.

3. Operational practices: DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices are integral to cloud-native methodologies, affecting how teams collaborate and manage applications.

4. Security: Cloud-native security practices are implemented throughout the application lifecycle, including concepts like zero-trust architecture and automated security testing.

5. Data management: Cloud-native databases and data processing systems are designed to work efficiently in distributed environments.

6. Networking: Software-defined networking and service mesh technologies are used to manage communication between microservices.

7. Cost optimization: Cloud-native practices aim to optimize resource utilization and costs through efficient scaling and management of cloud resources.

8. Multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments: Cloud-native principles can be applied across different cloud providers and in hybrid cloud scenarios.

9. Serverless computing: Many cloud-native applications leverage serverless architectures to further abstract infrastructure management.

10. Industry adoption: Cloud-native methodologies are being adopted across various industries, from startups to large enterprises, transforming how organizations approach software development and IT operations.

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