Why automation and scalability are the most important traits of your Kubernetes platform
Praveen Rajasekar
Head of Product Marketing
Today’s consumers expect incredible feats of speed and service delivered through easy-to-use apps and personalized interactions. Modern conveniences have taught consumers that their experience is paramount—no matter the size of the company, complexity of the problem, or regulations in the industry.
“Cloud-native technologies empower organizations to build and run scalable applications in modern, dynamic environments such as public, private, and hybrid clouds. Containers, service meshes, microservices, immutable infrastructure, and declarative APIs exemplify this approach. These techniques enable loosely coupled systems that are resilient, manageable, and observable. Combined with robust automation, they allow developers to make high-impact changes frequently and predictably with minimal toil.” (per Cloud Native Computing Foundation)
Modern cloud is container-first
Containers are a better way to develop and deploy modern cloud applications. Containers are more lightweight, faster, more portable, and easier to manage than virtual machines. Containers help developers to build more testable, secure systems while the operations team can isolate workloads inside cost-effective clusters. In a climate where IT needs are rapidly changing, driven by evolving customer demands, building and managing modern cloud applications means so much more than having a managed service platform. Modern cloud has become synonymous with containers and having a Kubernetes strategy is essential to success in IT.
Kubernetes for next-generation developers
A managed container platform like Kubernetes can extend the advantages of containers even further. Think of Kubernetes as the way to build customized platforms that enforce rules your enterprise cares about through controls over project creation, the nodes you use, and libraries and repositories you pull from. Background controls are not typically managed by app developers, rather they provide developers with a governed and secure framework to operate within.
Kubernetes is not just a technology — it's a model for creating and scaling value for your business, a way of developing reliable apps and services, and a means to secure and develop cloud-based IT capabilities for innovation.
Open source makes it easy
Google invented Kubernetes and continues to be the leading committer to this open source project. By betting on open source, you get the freedom to run where you want to. And the ecosystem around open source projects like Kubernetes means you get standardized plugins and extensions to create a developer-friendly, comprehensive platform. You can build best-in-class modern applications using open source that can seamlessly and securely be moved to Google Cloud when they are ready to deploy in the cloud.
GKE leads the way
Open source gives you freedom, while managed services based on open source give you the built-in best practices for deploying and running that software. Created by the same developers that built Kubernetes, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) is the best of both. Use standard Kubernetes, expertly operated by the company that knows it best. GKE lets you recognize the benefits of innovation initiatives without getting bogged down troubleshooting infrastructure issues and managing day-to-day operations related to enterprise-scale container deployment. The recipe for long-term success with Kubernetes is two-fold: automation that matters and scale that saves.
#1 Automation that matters
For cloud-based companies, the only constant is change. That means you need to be able to adapt quickly to changing conditions. This applies to your platforms too! Your application platform needs to be elastic and able to absorb changes without downtime. GKE delivers most dimensions of automation to efficiently and easily operate your applications. With fully managed Autopilot mode of operation combined with multi-dimensional auto-scaling capabilities, you can get started with a production ready secured cluster in minutes and have complete control over the configurations and maintenance.
Day 2 operations: With GKE, you have the option to automate node provisioning and upgrades, control plane upgrades, with choice of selective node auto upgrades and configurations. These capabilities provide you the flexibility to automate your infrastructure the way you want and gain significant time savings and alleviate maintenance requirements. Moreover, with GKE release channels, you have the power to decide not only when, but how, and what to upgrade in your clusters and nodes.
Modern cloud stack: You can install service mesh and config management solutions with the click of a button, and leave the provisioning and operations of these solutions to us. Google Cloud provisions, scales, secures and updates both the control and data planes, giving you all the benefits of a service mesh with none of the operational burden. You can let Google manage the upgrade and lifecycle tasks for both your cluster and your service mesh. In addition, you can take advantage of advanced telemetry, security and Layer 7 network policies provided by the mesh.
Cost optimization: You can optimize your Kubernetes resources with actionable insights: use GKE cost optimization insights, workload rightsizing and cost estimator, built right into the Google Cloud console . Read how a robotics startup switched clouds and reduced its Kubernetes ops costs with GKE Autopilot; fewer pages at night as clusters are scaled and maintained by Google Cloud, reduced cost, and a better and more secure experience for customers, freed up developer time away from managing Kubernetes.
Partner solutions: You can use your favorite DevOps and security solutions with GKE Autopilot out of the box. Despite being a fully managed Kubernetes platform that provides you with a hands-off approach to nodes, GKE Autopilot still supports the ability to run node agents using DaemonSets. This allows you to do things like collect node-level metrics without needing to run a sidecar in every Pod.
#2 Scale that saves
Whether your organization is scaling up to meet a sudden surge in demand or scaling down to manage costs, modern cloud applications have never been more important. Only GKE can run 15,000 node clusters, outscaling other cloud providers by up to 10X, letting you run applications effectively and reliably at scale. Organizations like Kitabisa and IoTex are already experiencing the benefits of running their modern cloud applications on the most scalable Kubernetes platform.
“The transformative value of GKE became apparent when severe flooding hit Sumatra in November 2021, affecting 25,000 people. Our system easily handled the 30% spike in donations.” - Kitabisa
"We regularly experience massive scaling surges from random places in the crypto universe. In the future, the IoTeX platform will secure billions of connected devices feeding their data snapshot to the blockchain. With GKE Autopilot and Cloud Load Balancing, we can easily absorb any load no matter how much or how fast we grow." – Larry Pang, Head of Ecosystem, IoTeX
Want to learn how to incorporate GKE into your own cloud environment? Register now to learn helpful strategies and best practices to power your business with modern cloud apps.
