Understanding Modern Application Architecture - Part 2

To help our Community transfer their skills to handle Modern Applications, we've released a video series to explain the major points. This article is part 2 and here are the other parts:

Understanding Modern Application Architecture - Part 1 

Understanding Modern Application Architecture - Part 3 

 

This next set of videos discuss the platforms and components that make up modern applications.

 

In this video, we review containers. These have become a key building block of microservices. They help achieve the application portability by neatly packaging up everything needing to bring up an application within a container runtime such as Docker. One great example of a container is the f5-demo-httpd container. This small lightweight container can be downloaded quickly to run a web server. It's incorporated into a lot of F5 demo environments because it is lightweight and can be customized by simply forking the repository and making your own changes.

 

 

In this next video, we talk about Kubernetes (or k8s for short). While there are container runtimes like Docker that can work individually on a server, the Kubernetes project has brought the concept into a form that can be scaled out. Worker nodes, where containers are run on, can be brought together into clusters. Commands can be issued to a Master Node via YAML files and have affect across the cluster. Containers can be scheduled efficiently across a cluster which is managed as one.

 

 

In this next video, we break down the Kubernetes API. The Kubernetes API is the main interface to a k8s cluster. While there are GUI solutions that can be added to a k8s cluster, they are still interfacing with the API so it is important to understand what the API is capable of and what it is doing with the cluster. The main way to issue commands to the API is through YAML files and the kubectl command. From there, the API server will interact with the other parts of the cluster to perform operations.

 

 

In this next video, we discuss Securing a Kubernetes cluster. There are a number of attack vectors that need to be understood and so we review them along with some of the actions that can be taken in order to increase the security for them.

 

 

In this next video, we go over Ingress Controller. An Ingres Controller is one of the main ways that traffic is brought from outside of the cluster, into a pod. This role is of particular interest to F5 customers as they can use NGINX, NGINX+ or BIG-IP to play this strategic role within a Kubernetes cluster.

 

 

In this next video, we talk about Microservices. As applications are decomposed from monolithic applications to modern applications, they are broken up into microservices that carry out individual functions of an application. The microservices then communicate with each other in order to deliver the overall application. It's important to then understand this service to service communication so that you can design application services around them such as load balancing, routing, visibility and security.

 

 

We hope that you've enjoyed this video series so far. In the next article, we'll be reviewing the components that aid in the management of a Kubernetes platform. Understanding Modern Application Architecture - Part 3