Kubernetes (also known as K8s), the container orchestration tool originally developed by Google, has quickly become the platform of choice for deploying containerized applications in public and private clouds.

For the DevOps teams, K8s provides a common platform for deploying their applications across the different cloud environments, abstracting the intricacies of the underlying cloud infrastructure, and allowing them to focus on their tasks. For organizations, this translates into flexibility to deploy the applications in the cloud that best meets the needs of customers, while optimizing costs at the same time.

This flexibility to deploy applications in any cloud, however, creates the challenge of making them accessible to end users in a reliable and consistent manner. For example, as an application is moved from a private to a public cloud (such as AWS or Azure), how do you ensure the same level of accessibility, performance, reliability, and security, as in the private cloud?

For making applications accessible to the end users, Kubernetes supports the following options:

NodePort: In this, a port is allocated on each node (known as NodePort) and the end users can access the application at the node’s IP address and port value. With this option, you have to manually configure a load balancer to distribute traffic among the nodes.

LoadBalancer: Like NodePort, this option allocates a port on each node and additionally connects to an external load balancer. This option requires integration with the underlying cloud provider infrastructure and hence, is typically used with public cloud providers that have such integration. This tight integration, however, makes moving an application from one cloud provider to another difficult and error-prone.

Ingress Controller: K8s defines an Ingress Controller that can route HTTP and HTTPS traffic to applications running inside the cluster. An Ingress Controller, however, does not do away with the requirement of an external load balancer. As in the case of the load balancer, each public cloud provider has its own Ingress Controller that works in conjunction with its own load balancer. For example, Azure’s AKS Application Gateway Ingress Controller is an Ingress Controller that works in conjunction with the Azure Application Gateway. This again makes the access solution specific to a cloud deployment.

Clearly, none of the above options provide a truly cloud-agnostic solution. Also, while using a cloud provider’s custom load balancing or Ingress Controller solution may be quick and easy in the short term, overall, it increases the management complexity and inhibits automation as you now have to deal with multiple different solutions.

A desired solution would have the following key attributes:

Cloud-agnostic: The solution should work in both public and private clouds. This means it should be available in different form factors (such as virtual, physical, and container) so that it can be deployed in a form that is optimal for that environment.

Dynamic configuration of load balancer: The solution should be able to dynamically configure the load balancer to route traffic to the Pods running inside the Kubernetes cluster as the Pods are created and scaled up/down.

Support automation tools: The solution should support automation tools for integration into existing DevOps processes such as CI/CD pipelines.

Centralized visibility and analytics: The solution should provide centralized visibility and analytics. This would enable proactive troubleshooting, and fast root-cause analysis, leading to higher application uptime.

Better Kubernetes support for more secure containerized apps

This release of DevOps Secrets Vault expands secure management of secrets for communication between Kubernetes containers. Enhancements to the webhook include dynamically updated secrets and support for custom namespaces. High-speed credentials management is now available for DevOps teams supporting Windows sidecar containers.

Harden apps by removing standing access to MongoDB

MongoDB is one of the top-rated databases in the Stack Overflow 2021 Developer Survey and an attractive target for cyber attacks. DevOps Secrets Vault introduces dynamic secrets for MongoDB, which can create and delete local users just-in-time in the database. With MongoDB now supported, DevOps and DevSecOps teams have more flexibility in securing access to the databases that developers prefer while minimizing standing privileges.

“Developers know security is important, but often don’t have enough time to prioritize it. The focus for DevSecOps should be on seamless usability and automation for elastic and dynamic environments,” commented Phil Calvin, Chief Product Officer at Delinea. “By expanding Kubernetes support and adding dynamic secrets for MongoDB, we continue to give DevOps teams the ability to minimize security vulnerabilities related to hard-coded credentials.”

The latest release also enhances the graphical user interface with auditing, policy management, and expanded secrets management, providing a more seamless and usable security experience compared to the command-line interface.

One of the ever more popular topics in information technology (IT) are container systems, such as Kubernetes. Increasingly, decision-makers at companies of all sizes cannot avoid asking themselves whether containers should be integrated into their own IT infrastructure. At the same time, VMware’s Kubernetes Report 2021 says that Kubernetes is already being used more widely, but at the same time there is a lack of expertise and the necessary security. Reason enough to take a closer look at important questions around Kubernetes – especially from a data protection perspective.

Integral part of hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructures?

In the networks of many corporations and long-established companies, containers do not yet exist, or have only existed for a short time. They were not part of the traditional network structures based on a data center. However, neither are they an integral part of modern multi-cloud environments or hybrid solutions – they just fit in very well. It is similar to virtualization: this also started as a trend that not every company had to take up and therefore not all did – only early adopters integrate technology from the beginning. But 20 years later, it seems, a large proportion of all companies have virtualized a high number of workloads.

Kubernetes is now acting as a management platform for containers and interestingly, established and regulated industries like banking and financial services show greater interest and are early adopters of this technology, while other industries are still observing and evaluating the pros and cons.

Compatible with the runtime environments?

Of course, the question immediately arises as to whether Kubernetes and the virtualization software are compatible. First, let’s set the record straight about exactly what we are talking about: Kubernetes is an orchestration system for containers; Docker for example, is for now the most common container runtime. The containers created in Docker can each exist and be worked on separately. Developers can manage them individually and do not necessarily need a higher-level solution to manage them. But with the number of containers, the complexity grows, and the overview is lost. To keep this effort small and as clear as possible, a central administration point must be set up – and this is where Kubernetes comes into play. The software keeps an eye on everything and ensures, for example, that payloads are distributed dynamically and sensibly to the containers to guarantee the availability of a service and ensure that it can meet all requirements. Kubernetes is thus an orchestration for Docker and accordingly, a connection between the two is not only possible but desirable.

New security vulnerabilities in sight?

Kubernetes does not change the threat landscape. It does not close security gaps but requires the same Modern Data Protection as any other type of data. Formerly, we just saved everything, then with virtualization, we selected what to protect and how often. Today, we move forward with containers that sometimes only last for minutes or hours, other than Virtual Machines that can have a lifetime of months. Kubernetes.io provides in-depth documentation that focuses on the “Four Cs” of cloud-native security: Code, Container, Cluster, Cloud/Corporate Data Center. It states that each layer of the cloud-native security model builds on the previous one. Accordingly, the coding layer (code layer) benefits from a strong foundation at the cloud, cluster, and container level. So, if weak IT security standards apply there, the difficulties cannot be solved at the coding level. Each level must therefore be a strong foundation in itself. Kubernetes simply comes in here as the orchestrator of the containers.

Kubernetes on the rise?

The analysts at ESG published a report in September 2020 called Data Protection Trends and Strategies for Containers, which summarizes the results of a survey of 334 enterprise IT professionals from the United States and Canada. When asked about their use of containers, 67 percent said they use them for production-related applications. This statement underscores the increasing adoption and integration of containers into systems and networks, and this trend will continue over the next two years.

With the rise of containers, Kubernetes will then also increasingly enter the scene to manage the new environment well. Kubernetes will probably start this triumphant march with startups and large corporations first, because the former can build their networks and accordingly incorporate the new technology immediately, while the latter have the necessary money and personnel to successfully incorporate the new technology.

Moro Hub hosts the region’s first-tier III certified solar-powered Green Data Centre that focuses on sustainable practices to deliver customer-centric innovation.

“A key advantage is that NetApp’s unified software-defined platform supports all types of data across the Data Centre and the cloud, whether it’s Storage Area Network (SAN), Network Attached Storage (NAS), or Simple Storage Service (S3), which will help meet customers’ existing requirements while keeping the budgets affordable,” said Eng. Marwan Bin Haidar, Vice Chairman and Group CEO of Digital DEWA.

Moro Hub makes use of container orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes, to provide the scalability and flexibility required to modernize the applications and services. Through this collaboration, Moro Hub aims to leverage the underlying technology and enhance the Kubernetes-native integration.

“We are incredibly excited to be a key enabler in supporting Moro Hub’s efforts to provide businesses with sustainable data management offerings,” said Fadi Kanafani, Managing Director – Middle East at NetApp.

With NetApp’s vast experience in NAS and NFS protocols, along with the solution’s solid integration in containers, NetApp and Moro Hub aim to simplify, integrate and unify the use of the container platform as a service.

From enterprise solutions to cloud architects, from containers to encryption tools, and from data tools to insight creators, open source had managed to build the most avant-garde products including security firewalls in recent years. Its consistent pattern of growth has invited major IT giants to obtain stakes in innovative projects.

 Rise of Kubernetes

Kubernetes is an open-source system to automate deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications to leverage on-premises, hybrid, or public cloud infrastructure. Kubernetes allows scaling without increasing the ops team. Before Kubernetes, the development and deployment of cloud-native applications were challenging. After Kubernetes, open source platforms do all the heavy lifting. The platform for running containerized workloads attracted developers from the open source community around the world, and its functions are quite similar to an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution and a Platform-as-a-Service resource (PaaS). It also offers the facility to monitor the status of a deployment in-progress, and complements a DevOps ecosystem.

Fog Computing

Fog computing is a distributed network connecting edge computing and cloud or IoT. The core idea of a distributed network is that it connects different environments. Fog computing frameworks provide more choices to process data when appropriate.

Cisco partnered with Microsoft, Dell, Intel and Princeton University in 2015 to form the OpenFog Consortium. General Electric (GE), Hitachi, Foxconn came forward to contribute to the mission. Promotion and standardization were the primary goals of the consortium. It had also merged with Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) in 2019.

Data Gets Bigger and Better

Big data will continue to get bigger and better. Open-source technologies will continue to make big data into the future. Let’s take a look at the powerful open source tools that handle big data.

Apache Hadoop

Apache Hadoop has enormous capabilities in processing large-scale data. It is also considered to be the most prominent tool used widely in the big-data industry. This is a 100 percent open source framework and runs on commodity hardware in an existing data center. Furthermore, it can run on a cloud infrastructure.

Hadoop has four parts, which are:

• Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) – a distributed file system compatible with very high scale bandwidth
• MapReduce:A programming model
• YARN:It is a platform that manages and schedules Hadoop’s resources
• Libraries:It helps other modules to work with Hadoop

MongoDB is an open source NoSQL database. It has a lot of built-in features and it is a cross-platform compatible application. It is suitable for the business that needs fast and real-time data. It also runs on MEAN software stack, NET applications and, Java platform.

Key features of MongoDB:

• It stores any type of data like integer, string, array, object, boolean, date, etc.
• It gives flexibility in cloud-based infrastructure
• It partitions data across the servers in a cloud structure
• MongoDB’s dynamic schemas is another way of cost-saving

HPCC

High-Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC) is one of the best open source big data tools and the competitor of Hadoop in the market.

Important features of HPCC:

• Helps in the parallel data processing
• Runs on commodity hardware
• Comes with binary packages supported for Linux distributions
• Supports end-to-end big data workflow management

Open Source and Cloud Factor

With most IT departments willing to avoid installing and maintaining applications locally when possible, the cloud is becoming the chosen platform for open source applications. And the trend is not just limited to small app developers; even Microsoft Office 365 is a semi-cloud offering including its chief rival Google Apps. Hybrid cloud gave enterprises choices – to figure out the right kind of cloud that can handle their workloads. However, its definition changed over time. Initially thought of in the context of cloud bursting where the on-premise infrastructure can reach out to a public cloud if usage spikes, the hybrid cloud now addresses data and application portability without racking up bandwidth bills for enterprises.

Hybrid cloud today is essentially a functional and effective combo of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications, container platforms, and public clouds, which facilitates data and application portability from one location to another whenever necessary.

 Open Source Security

What makes open source solutions the big fat targets is their rising popularity and ubiquity, which also makes the industry to take notice and collaboratively fund (once woefully under-resourced) projects like OpenSSL.

OpenSSL is licensed under an Apache-style license. Barring some simple license conditions, OpenSSL is free for both commercial and non-commercial purposes. Users can report vulnerabilities and they get fixed regularly.

Data Encryption

This is the foremost and basic way to secure the whole data and encrypt your entire data to encode a message or information. Starting from small-scale enterprises to large corporates spend millions of dollars for a secure way of transmitting and receiving. As chances are high for cybercriminals to keep a tab on any careless distribution of data, mainly from financial institutions, and use it for fraudulent activities. So, user inputs and personally identifiable information (PII) have to be protected with utmost importance.

Even though, there are numerous encryption tools available in both closed and open source software libraries, VeraCrypt, AxCrypt, FileVault, GNU Privacy Guard are popular among free tools.

Office Applications

Microsoft Office has an elephant share of users amongst office applications. It had further developed that to Office 365 combining email, video conference, and its traditional applications (Excel, PowerPoint, etc.). It could also propagate Office 365 as a complete solution with document control features.

In the open source arena, the Documents Foundation community’s LibreOffice based on OpenOffice.org is one of the most popular software. The group of applications is observed as a feasible alternative to Microsoft Office 365 and acts as a free tool for edit, document and distribute content. The developer community claims, “we believe that users should have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change, and improve the software that we distribute.” It adds, “while we do offer no-cost downloads of the LibreOffice suite of programs, free software becomes the foremost a matter of liberty, not price.”

Apart from LibreOffice, WPS, Polaris and a few others also offer open source document solutions for mobile and computer users.

Conclusion

For open source enthusiasts, the last few years were full of exciting developments which contributed to the growth of many open source services – from open source CMS development to open source cloud. Infrastructure software is getting paradigm shifts and new developments under open source licenses massively expand their potential. Until now, there hasn’t been any disappointment for open source supporters but has exceptional resources and reasons to endorse the idea. Hopefully, we will see open source dominating even more soon.