Boosting Multi-Cloud OpenShift App availability & resiliency with F5 Distributed Cloud Services

In a follow-up to my previous post, "F5 Distributed Cloud Services to Connect and Secure Multi-Cloud OpenShift Workloads," I'm pleased to introduce two new challenges that multi-cloud OpenShift workloads commonly face, along with the solutions provided by F5 Distributed Cloud Services. As part of our ongoing "OpenShift Anywhere with F5 Distributed Cloud" video series, we've released two new demos illustrating these solutions in action.

Challenge 3: Enabling Blue-Green Deployments for OpenShift in Multi-Cloud Environments

Implementing Blue-Green deployments, a strategy that ensures near-zero downtime during application updates, is a common requirement in today's continuous delivery (CD) practices. However, enabling this strategy efficiently across multi-cloud OpenShift environments can be a challenge due to:

• Differing cloud-specific load balancer configurations
• Complexities in traffic routing and management across environments
• Difficulty in synchronizing deployments and rollbacks across multi-cloud environments

Variations of Blue-Green Deployments

Several architectural patterns related to Blue-Green deployments exist, each offering a unique approach to automated production deployment. Some of these include:

• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): In this variant, the release deployment target environment is created by the DevOps pipeline. After deployment, the original 'blue' environment is scheduled for destruction once the 'green' environment is stable in production.
• Container-based Deployment: Here, the release deployment target comprises one or more containers. Post-release, the 'blue' container group is scheduled for destruction once the 'green' environment is considered stable.

F5 Distributed Cloud DNS Load Balancer for OpenShift

To meet this challenge, we introduce F5 Distributed Cloud DNS Load Balancer, designed to facilitate seamless Blue-Green deployments across multi-cloud OpenShift environments. The following demo video showcases how to use the F5 Distributed Cloud DNS Load Balancer to manage traffic effectively during Blue-Green deployments:

Challenge 4: Interconnecting Multi-cluster OpenShift Applications in Multi-Cloud Environments

Modern applications, distributed across multiple locations and composed of various microservices, have become the norm in today's dynamic computing environment. This architecture leverages the flexibility and scalability of multi-cluster OpenShift deployments, enhancing application availability.

However, with this distributed structure comes the challenge of maintaining seamless interconnectivity between applications across these clusters. As organizations grow, merge, acquire new businesses, or change contracts, securely managing access to these distributed components becomes a complex task for IT administrators and security operations. The main challenges include:

• Facilitating efficient communication and data synchronization across clusters
• Managing application connectivity amidst varying network environments
• Balancing workload distribution across multi-cluster environments
• Controlling access to all the components of distributed apps

Solution Overview: F5 Distributed Cloud App Connect for OpenShift

Consider the scenario of Arcadia Finance, a distributed application with modules operating in multiple Kubernetes clusters across various locations. As part of a strategy to accelerate the development of the 'Refer A Friend' module, the business outsourced this task to an external team. This module was migrated to a separate Kubernetes cluster, exclusive to the contracted team for active development and management.

Now, when this module becomes operational in the new setup, two key challenges arise: transitioning the traffic from the in-house version to the contractor-managed version and making this module available to another Kubernetes cluster running in a different cloud environment.

F5 Distributed Cloud App Connect is designed to address these complexities, enabling seamless interconnectivity among multi-cluster OpenShift applications. It ensures efficient communication and synchronization among distributed components across varying network environments. The following demo video presents how App Connect facilitates seamless application interconnection in a multi-cluster OpenShift environment:

Conclusion

In this update, we've expanded on the possibilities of the F5 Distributed Cloud Services in tackling challenges related to Blue-Green deployments and application interconnection in multi-cloud OpenShift environments. As we continue to roll out our "OpenShift Anywhere with F5 Distributed Cloud" video series, we aim to provide insightful and practical content that will help users navigate the complexities of Multi-Cloud OpenShift services.

Stay tuned for more exciting and informative updates from F5 Distributed Cloud Services!