brief introduction ： Cloud primordial is one of the hottest technical hot words in recent years , Almost all cloud computing products are more or less associated with cloud primitives , Cloud native is reshaping the entire software lifecycle . But what is cloud primordial ？ What is the biggest technological innovation and future opportunity brought by cloud native ？ as well as , Around cloud native , Whether we can build a set of development and operation and maintenance system on the cloud , Create a new generation of R & D platform , Maximize R & D efficiency ？

author | Shutong
source | The official account of Ali

Cloud primordial is one of the hottest technical hot words in recent years , Almost all cloud computing products are more or less associated with cloud primitives , Cloud native is reshaping the entire software lifecycle . But what is cloud primordial ？ What is the biggest technological innovation and future opportunity brought by cloud native ？ as well as , Around cloud native , Whether we can build a set of development and operation and maintenance system on the cloud , Create a new generation of R & D platform , Maximize R & D efficiency ？

The following is compiled from Ding Yu, head of Alibaba cloud native application platform （ Shutong ） Technology sharing within Alibaba , Hope to help technical students better understand the cloud .

Ding Yu （ Shutong ）

I often hear some students talking about cloud in the elevator , People will ask why cloud primordial is so hot . Let's push the timeline back 20 year , At that time, the most popular was enterprise software architecture , Enterprise use ERP、CRM Do information reform . Ten years ago , The consumer Internet began to rise , At that time, the most popular Internet technology ; Today is the era of industrial Internet , With the rapid development of Cloud Computing , Enterprises need to accelerate digital innovation , Build digital resilience , Cloud Nativity came into being .

One Clouds born of clouds are original

What is Yunyuan ？ This is a problem that many students are concerned about . Representative technologies of cloud Nativity include containers 、 Service Grid 、 Microservices 、 Immutable infrastructure and declarative API. These technologies can build good fault tolerance 、 A loosely coupled system that is easy to manage and easy to observe . Combined with reliable automation means , Cloud native technology enables engineers to easily make frequent and predictable major changes to the system .

Cloud native is a new way of Computing , Let applications take full advantage of Cloud Computing . Only in combination with cloud services provided by cloud native , Transform the architecture of the application , To make better use of cloud native technology , And better build resilience 、 Stable 、 Loosely coupled distributed applications , Solve the problem of distributed complexity . Besides , The transformation of the architecture also means the relevant development mode 、 delivery 、 The mode of operation and maintenance will change accordingly , such as , Rewrite the application with microservice architecture 、 In declarative form API And automatic tool upgrade, operation and maintenance mode, etc . Simply speaking , Cloud Nativity has greatly changed the entire software production pipeline , The specific degree of change depends on the enterprise's use of cloud native .

that , What is the difference between cloud native and cloud computing ？ We think , Cloud nativity is a re upgrade of cloud computing . The advantage of cloud computing is resources 、 Calculation 、 Storage 、 Network pooling , The benefit of this pooling is large-scale intensive management , elastic 、 Distributed is everywhere , It can use a kind of API Carry out operation and maintenance management , So as to realize the automation of Management . today , Cloud native technology can achieve its mission only when combined with cloud , To build those with high elasticity 、 Scalable 、 loose coupling 、 A system with good fault tolerance .

What is the combination of cloud native and cloud computing ？ It's a cloud native product . today , Alicloud has a definition of native cloud , Born in the clouds 、 Longer than clouds , Products born of the cloud 、 technology 、 Software 、 Hardware 、 framework , We think it's all cloud primordial . Take Alibaba cloud for example , We provide big data 、 middleware 、 database 、 Security 、 Audio and video , And cloud native networks 、 Elastic bare metal servers 、 Storage, etc , These are cloud native products . From this dimension , The connotation of cloud primordial is greatly enriched . From the perspective of enterprise customers , Cloud native means that enterprises have built a new generation of software architecture , That's cloud native architecture .

Two Alibaba 15 Year cloud native practice

2006 year , We began to explore the distributed architecture of the Internet , This is also the starting point of Alibaba cloud's original practice . The reason why we want to do Internet distributed architecture , Because Taobao encountered some difficulties in the process of rapid development at that time , such as 300 Human development 3 A system , This brings some conflict problems , Such as code release 、 Code merging, etc , These conflicts have led to a significant decline in the efficiency of the R & D team , Business isn't moving fast enough . Because these pain points , We propose to do service-oriented splitting , It's a distributed system . stay 2008 In, Taobao completed the service-oriented split , Three core middleware are formed , And open source the industry .

2011 year , We began to promote the landing of containerization . Why containerization ？ Need to know , stay 2011 There are only a few companies in the world doing containerization in . The main reason for containerization is that we began to focus on resource utilization , From the perspective of resource supply , There used to be several forms , For example, using pure physical machines , This means that the deployment density is relatively thick , So the utilization rate is not high . If you isolate with virtualization , There will be a certain amount of resource consumption . stay 2011 year , Alibaba began to do container technology transformation ——T4 project . Container solves three core problems , One is deployment density , Second, operation and maintenance efficiency , Third, resource isolation . With Docker Appearance , The standardization ability of its container image has greatly promoted the automatic operation and maintenance , Ensure that the container can achieve standardized delivery . Based on this , Alibaba will Docker Integrate , Promote more standardized cloud native technology .

2015 year , When our technology and products mature , Start to promote the commercialization of product technology , And embrace cloud native standards . In the process , Alibaba's own business development has also begun to fully enjoy the dividends of Cloud Computing . Such as double 11、 double 12 This kind of peak business , How to solve the extreme flexibility brought by resource pooling through cloud platform ？ from 2015 Year begins , Alibaba cloud began to support Alibaba's dual 11, meanwhile , We started to implement the unified scheduling of containers and the unification of the underlying resource pool . besides , We've also done a variety of things , Like hybrid deployment , Realize the unification of technology stack 、 Data unification , So the cost of resources is greatly reduced , The operation and maintenance efficiency has been improved , Better promote business intelligence .

Let's imagine , A company has 1 10,000 engineers , If you can improve 10% R & D efficiency , Can save 1000 Famous engineer , It's a huge release of our productivity . further , If we could have some more efficient platforms , More advanced methods and processes , And into the technical system , It will greatly improve the productivity of technicians .

2019 year , It means a lot to Alibaba cloud . In this year , Alibaba cloud supports Alibaba's dual 11 The core system 100% On the cloud , The scale of online business container is close to 200 ten thousand 、100% Adopt DPCA bare metal server 、 It's cost-effective 20%. Then in 2020 year , We have completed the core system again 100% Yunyuan biochemistry , Yunyuansheng products began to fully support the group's promotion , And become the new base of the world's largest cloud native practice . The driving force behind this , Is to use the cloud native platform 、 product 、 Tools , Realize the application on the cloud 、 Grow on the cloud .

in fact , Server based cloud services are not the end of the cloud era . Just imagine , If the concept of server is further abstracted , Then the maintenance work related to the server will be undertaken by the cloud , This is what we often say Serverless. Over the past decade , The cloud is gradually moving towards Serverless evolution .2016 year , Function computing released by Alibaba cloud provides function level abstraction ,2019 Published in SAE Provides application level abstraction , These products erase the concept of server , It greatly simplifies the use of the cloud , And gradually become a trend .

3、 ... and Alibaba cloud's assertion of cloud origin

Under the trend of Enterprise Cloud , We see more and more enterprises and developers begin to evolve their business and technology to the cloud . In the age of cloud Nativity , What is the core competitiveness of cloud products ？ in my opinion , The foundation of cloud products is to continue to be the representative of advanced productivity , This requires cloud products to have hard core technology capabilities , And can achieve fast iteration . For any business , It is difficult for our own system to have such tenacious vitality and competitiveness . therefore , Alibaba is in 2020 In, it was fully switched to cloud native product support , One is to recognize the trend of cloud native technology , Second, the internal R & D efficiency of cloud products to Alibaba 、 Resource utilization has greatly improved .

Based on this , Alibaba cloud has made three assertions about cloud nativity ：

** First , Containers +K8s Will become a new interface for Cloud Computing .** Containers have revolutionized the way the cloud is used , It solves many problems at the same time , It also creates new architectural possibilities . Containerization is the key to building cloud natives , If cloud is a high-rise building , So containerization is the base of this building . The container supports multiple workloads and distributed architectures upward , Encapsulating infrastructure down , Shield the differences between the underlying architecture and heterogeneous environment , And can form the application packaging image distribution delivery standard . Alibaba cloud container service ACK It encapsulates down 30 Cloud products , A new interface is formed for the interaction between the whole automatic operation and maintenance and cloud platform , So as to improve the flexibility of the system and the ability of automatic operation and maintenance . meanwhile , Container also promotes the upgrade of software and hardware integration , Such as dragon bare metal server .

** secondly , For developers , Cloud nativity is reshaping the entire software life cycle .** We see cloud origin extending downward to promote the integration of software and hardware , To push forward the modernization of architecture , Horizontal extension solves the challenge of R & D operation and maintenance life cycle , Including code development 、DevOps、CICD technological process 、 Operation and maintenance monitoring 、 Observable, etc . Cloud nativity is closely related to the whole development process of developers , It's an important help that developers can't ignore .

** Last , For enterprises , Cloud origin is the shortest path for enterprise digital innovation .** The value of cloud Nativity for enterprise technology evolution lies in ： The first is the cloud of infrastructure , Represented by containers , Move the infrastructure very smoothly to the cloud , Help enterprises complete the cloud of infrastructure . Second, the core technology is Internet , Cloud native delivers Internet technology to traditional offline enterprises in a standardized way , Internet technology 、 Ideas 、 idea 、 Organizational form can help traditional enterprises upgrade their capabilities , Achieve low coupling 、 Scalable 、 Small step run 、 Fast iteration 、 agile development 、 The business goes online quickly . Third, cloud native driven application architecture is evolving towards modernization . We often say “ One cloud, many cores ”“ Cloud and edge ” Equal concept , Is to solve the problem of enterprise data 、 Intelligent 、 Mobility issues . Under the cloud native technology system , Cloud native can better drive enterprises IT System change . Fourth, multiple middle platforms . Cloud native helps enterprises build business platforms 、 Data center 、AI Central Taiwan, etc , Because the key to digital transformation is to digitize and intelligently upgrade the business with data , So as to better drive business iteration and innovation .

Alibaba cloud has the richest cloud native product family in China , There are more than 100 Cloud native products , Nearly a thousand technology solutions , Including cloud native DevOps、aPaaS& Microservices 、 Message and event driven 、 Application tools 、Serverless Architecture, etc , And cloud native database 、 big data /AI、 Application delivery and security capabilities . so to speak , An enterprise was born in the era of cloud nativity , You can put your own IT The system is built based on the cloud , Alibaba cloud can provide the most complete technical solutions and product systems .

Cloud native is not a monopoly Technology , Alibaba cloud does not win customers through monopoly , We must rely on advanced technical concepts and hard core technical strength . Alibaba cloud container service has been selected for three consecutive years Gartner Competitive landscape of public cloud containers , Product richness and maturity continue to maintain the world's leading level ; Alicloud selected Forrester FaaS The leadership quadrant , The capability of function computing products is the world's leading ; Alicloud selected Gartner APM Magic Quadrant , The only cloud manufacturer in China , Product capability and strategic vision are highly recognized by analysts .

Four Cloud native drives the arrival of the era of all cloud development

In the process of rapid development of cloud primary , Also see some trends ： Such as the container +K8s Become a technology infrastructure . The container decouples the application runtime from the environment ,K8s Decouple resource management from infrastructure , Encapsulate the infrastructure layer down , Shielding infrastructure differences , Connecting heterogeneous computing power , Cloud edge integration , Build a distributed cloud ; Support a variety of heterogeneous workloads up , Distributed 、 Elastic and expandable 、Mesh Decouple , Promote the modernization and evolution of application architecture . so to speak , Container and K8s It has become a distributed operating system in the era of Cloud Computing .

We also see the innovation of cloud native development model . A survey from developers around the world shows that , The traditional development mode is in sharp contrast to the cloud native development mode . The cloud native development mode adopts modular architecture , Communicate through standard interfaces and protocols . In terms of scalability , It can automatically expand elastically on demand , And it has good portability . These features have subverted the traditional development model .

In addition to changes in development patterns , We also see , Driven by the native cloud , A new era of development is coming .

2021 end of the year ,68% Your organization will use containers in the production environment , Increase over last year 39%, More than two years ago 240%. Ali in 2016 In the 100% Containerization , And in the 2021 year ,68% Your enterprise will use containers in the production environment , One thing is for sure , Containers have become an absolute trend .

Developers' willingness to develop on the cloud has reached 68%. A large number of developers have sensed the changes brought about by cloud development , Including front-end / Back end , Webpage 、 Mobile 、 Applet , Logic 、 Model 、 Components etc. , Cloud development brings productivity improvements , A substantial increase in efficiency, etc .

To 2021 end of the year ,25% Developers will use Serverless product . today , We have begun to invest heavily in Serverless product , Including function calculation FC、Serverless Application engine SAE、Serverless Container services ASK、 No server infrastructure ASI、 Examples of flexible containers ECI etc. . Alibaba cloud and Amoy 、 Gao de 、 Idle fish are also exploring Serverless More cooperation , You may not feel Serverless, But in fact, many technologies have Serverless Changed .

5、 ... and Layout open source ecology , Promote all cloud development and practice

Alibaba cloud has the most comprehensive cloud native open source contribution in China . today , Ali Yun in GitHub The total number of open source projects on the has exceeded 2600+, Covering big data 、 Cloud computing 、AI、 middleware 、 Containers 、Serverless Other fields , Have more than 30000+ Contributor, Over a million GitHub Star, Listed in the open source community of Chinese enterprises GitHub Top contribution . Among them , Some open source projects have also become de facto standards in this field . such as Dubbo It has become the most influential in China 、 The most widely used open source microservice framework ;RocketMQ It is the first Internet Middleware in China Apache Top projects , It is also the No.1 open source middleware project in China . Besides , We also have an application management engine KubeVela, Alibaba's first edge computing project just opened last year OpenYurt, Chaos engineering tools in distributed high availability domain ChaosBlade 、 Service registration found Nacos And the first Serverless Developer Platform Serverless Devs etc. .

For the entire technology community , Alibaba cloud feeds back the technical achievements of many years of research and development to the world's top foundations , For example, the open source foundation 、 Apache Foundation, etc , Alibaba cloud is committed to building an open 、 The standard 、 Healthy and benign Technological Ecology . so to speak , A developer wants to build an open source architecture based on cloud native technology , You can find your own solutions in Alibaba cloud ecosystem . Alibaba cloud has served a large number of enterprise level head users , Such as iqiyi 、 Tiger tooth live broadcast 、 Southern airlines 、 Ping An technology, etc , At the same time, we are building a set of open standard technology system , Serve global developers .

When cloud primordial was first proposed , It takes resource cluster management and operation and maintenance as the starting point , But today, if you want to run all your workload on one infrastructure , There is also a lack of application management . So we propose , Application centric , Separation of concerns , Develop O & M infrastructure 、 Cooperation boundary 、 agreement 、 Methods are all defined , That is, a one-stop application management and delivery platform KubeVela. This year, 6 month ,KubeVela Get into CNCF Sandbox, At present, the number of image downloads has exceeded 30 Ten thousand times , Have 20 A number of global corporate customers . It is also a great honor to be approved by the Institute of information and communications as an industry standard this year OAM.

Enterprise cloud is the trend . Alibaba cloud took the lead in opening source and self-development in China RocketMQ, Become Apache Top open source projects .RocketMQ It provides users with high performance 、 Highly reliable 、 Low latency messaging services , It has become the preferred solution for financial business messages in the industry .

With the development of cloud native technology and comprehensive cloud has become the general trend , We see that many enterprise customers have deeper demands for the evolution of message oriented middleware . Next , We will release it simultaneously in the community and business RocketMQ 5.0, New definition “ news 、 event 、 flow ” The new concept of integrated processing .RocketMQ 5.0 Will be in the infrastructure cloud 、 Message flow processing and event driven bring changes .

First , Based on Alibaba cloud's mass production practice ,RocketMQ5.0 It will provide a minimalist elastic architecture that can be adjusted for a variety of scenarios , Help enterprise customers in resource flexibility 、 Operation and maintenance complexity 、 Balance business ecology and innovation ; secondly ,RocketMQ5.0 A new lightweight streaming processing framework will be provided around high-value message data , It is convenient for enterprise developers to process message calculation and analysis nearby ; Last , Facing the future ,RocketMQ 5.0 Will be based on open standards , Connect cloud services and open source Ecology , And cooperate with Serverless Development mode , Provide users with low code 、 Next generation event driven architecture services without servers .

Alibaba cloud has invested heavily in open source , Establish more technical standards , Help millions of developers use more advanced cloud native technologies , Let the community ecology establish a very good connection with the cloud , Boost the collaborative development of enterprises and cloud .

Double last year 11, Alibaba has launched the world's largest cloud native practice . stay 2016-2019 year , We used nearly 4 Year time , Reduce the transaction cost of double eleven thousand transactions 80%, This year, double 11 It is expected to achieve a new breakthrough . It relies on unified scheduling , Mixed deployment , Time division multiplexing , High elasticity , So as to greatly improve the resource utilization of applications or clusters .

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