Experts of DataLine: It is necessary to reformat thinking to transfer applications to the container world

Anton Gudenko: We provide to clients a ready cluster of containers under control of Kubernetes. The cluster is unrolled in our cloud by CloudLine. The service is provided on service model.

Mikhail Solovyov: Technology of containers – the next step after virtualization. Containers allow to lower significantly time of an output of new service for the market (time to market), to reduce time of a vykatka of updates for developer company of software. Containers also allow to scale quickly services therefore big business uses this technology in a produktiva already today.

Anton Gudenko: Containers are also useful in terms of ensuring high reliability at the expense of mechanisms of automatic regeneration of containers in case of their failure. These mechanisms are initially put in technology of container virtualization.

Mikhail Solovyov: Essence of new containers in the following: the appendix is had, it is normal – microservice. For work of this application the container in which the specialized operating system is installed forms. And it is not OS of general purpose, but monolithic, atomic OS which will allow to start the one and only application. Farther in this container, over the operating system, necessary libraries and the application are established. All this procedure is performed automatically, from the code in which the algorithm of creation of a container is described. This container, unlike the physical server or the virtual machine, does not assume a possibility of administration – it is impossible to update the operating system, to deliver an antivirus, in it work of users is impossible. The container either works, or is not present, updating as a status for it is not provided at all.

Mikhail Solovyov: At the heart of operating systems for containerization – Photon OS, Alpine – really lies Linux, but it is necessary to remember how we already said above that they essentially differ from any OS of general purpose, including Linux as have no interface, do not require updating and so on. Besides, as Microsoft goes to containerization too, over container OS it is possible to start including the.NET Core applications, to transfer the applications created on a stack of Microsoft to a container.

Mikhail Solovyov: The main lack of containerization consists that it is necessary to reformat thinking to transfer monolithic applications to the container, microservice world. The second shortcoming – containerization only begins to develop, there are different systems of orchestration Dockers – including Kubernetes which the Google company put on the market not so long ago. The Kubernetes environment, the containers Docker very quickly develop, behind it it is necessary to watch closely and be ready to changes too. In this world there is revolution now, a lot of absolutely new appears. Respectively, it is necessary to change applications, approaches to writing of the code, to administration and operation of information systems.

Mikhail Solovyov: We build services in two ways. The first – we look for components on which it is possible to construct new service in the market. The second way – attentively we study experience of our customers what services by them are already demanded. So we saw at ourselves one customer who on a cloud of CloudLine turned Kubernetes cluster almost from one hundred cars, independently exercising control of containers. Very demanded application which millions of citizens of the Russian Federation use works at this cluster today. After that we in a new way looked at tasks which we help to solve to our customers on CloudLine cloud, and understood that it is necessary to make a cloud service within which we could provide to the customer service in management of containers.

Anton Gudenko: We saw, first, that the technology of containerization begins to form, and secondly, interest in it from the market grows. On a joint of these two vectors we also understood what should be made, aimed to create the relevant service and created it.

Mikhail Solovyov: Platforms for management of containers exist – Dockers Swarm, Mesos, Consul and some other, Dockers Swarm was the most mass of them until recently. However, with the advent of Kubernetes, this open technology from Google became the market leader and de facto the standard. The majority of platforms begin or to pass to Kubernetes, or to use this technology.

Anton Gudenko: By different estimates, 60 – 70% of clusters work today for Kubernetes therefore the question of the choice of the platform for implementation of a new cloud service if stood, then it is very short.

Mikhail Solovyov: We considered several suppliers of the solution, and made a choice for benefit of Containerum from Exon Lab company. On its base we are capable to provide registered in SLA levels of availability and quality of KuberLine service.

Anton Gudenko: Preparation included, first of all, formation of vision of the product based on a research of interests of our clients. Then we looked for the partner, developer company as DataLine is first of all infrastructure, service company. Further approbation of the different platforms offered by partners on our infrastructure followed. As a result – the choice of the solution Exon Lab, assembly of the solution and formation of the product KuberLine.

Anton Gudenko: On the basis of Kubernetes the companies of the most different scale and a profile of activity, representatives of the most different industries, and abroad, and in Russia use clusters today. The most known of Russian – S7 airline, Aeroflot, Sberbank, Avito, from among the international brands – Amazon, Deutsche Telekom, eBay and many others. Today it is possible to select two main scenarios of use of KuberLine service. First, service is interesting to the companies with high dynamics of development of the software products. The second scenario – use of service by the company which is actively working on the Internet, having the high-loaded appendices with heterogeneous traffic from users.

Mikhail Solovyov: Important indicator – the term of an output to the market of updating or services. If it is required that the release turned into commercial operation within minutes, in this case not to do without Kubernetes. One more group interested in service – the companies working within world alliances. When the international company passes to the new technologies cooperating with it structures too should pass to them. For example, when the French Sabre which is engaged in armoring of air tickets worldwide passed to Kubernetes, S7 and Aeroflot were forced to make the same. And one more problem which the container technology helps to solve is as follows. Earlier the developer delivered the application to the customer in the form of the distribution kit accompanied with the installation instruction and to use. The application delivered in the form of the container Docker which is developed in the environment of Kubernetes is ready to start, it does not require any setup. It increases the speed of acceptance of the application from the developer that is useful even for such, generally, slow customers as banks.

Anton Gudenko: The Open Cluster option is classical service of providing clusters in the form in which it is provided today by Mail.Ru, Google or Amazon. It is intended for the companies able to administer independently Kubernetes clusters, to provide their availability and working capacity. In this case we collect a cluster of containers for the client and we give it reins of government. Certainly, it requires existence in staff of the client of specialists of quite high level. The Ready Cluster service is aimed at the companies to which advantages of Kubernetes are interesting, but independently they cannot be engaged in administration, provide their working capacity or do not want. These functions are undertaken in this case by our company, and tough SLA subscribes.

Anton Gudenko: Within SLA, as key parameters, we guarantee availability at the level of 99.95%, time of creation and removal of groups of containers (so-called pod) within two minutes – and it, in fact, and there is a time of horizontal scaling providing high flexibility of technology and readiness for changes in a cluster. In addition, we guarantee that the recovery time of operability of a cluster, in case of criticality accident, will not exceed 120 minutes. Besides, the opportunity of use of disk subsystems of absolutely different level is given. Thus, the cluster can be collected under any task of the client. The main thing – to understand his requirements for what we conduct with the client an interview during which we learn what problems should be solved.

Mikhail Solovyov: In addition it would be desirable to emphasize – as the client cluster of Kubernetes is developed over CloudLine cloud, final cluster sizes are almost not limited. We guarantee any number of workers and master nodes, any their reasonable configuration. Besides, as the commercial data center, largest in Russia, we are capable to provide any network coherence necessary for the high-loaded applications.

Anton Gudenko: If to consider service in Open Cluster option, competitors in the Russian market are available, the most known of them – Mail.ru. Models of providing service are ideologically similar, however we consider that in our option service more is suitable for the solution of operational and productive tasks of the client. And here by Ready Cluster option, with the same deep SLA and readiness to assume penalties, in the market we do not see analogs of service yet. So it is possible to tell that Kuberline by ready cluster option in the market has no direct competitors today.

Anton Gudenko: The service young also assumes that the client before contract signature goes through a test stage and piloting. For today in a stage of piloting there are four clusters. Among customers of these projects there are developer companies of software, the large retailer.

Mikhail Solovyov: We invite customers to address us, to test service. It is important to us to understand that is wanted by the client as far as our offer corresponds to market requests. Together we are capable to develop the correct configuration of service. Would like to emphasize that the novelty of service and technology, does not cancel that fact which was mentioned above – already today we have clients using Kubernetes in a produktiva on CloudLine cloud.

Mikhail Solovyov: In plans – timely migration on new versions of the Kubernetes distribution kit after their acceptance of developers by community. It is important as products develop and it is necessary to use new opportunities. Further – following to requirements of our clients for receiving additional services by them, whether it be network coherence or fast disks.

Anton Gudenko: For today, in the first release of our KuberLine service, its automatic flexible scaling within in advance selected resource of capacities is provided. Further we are going to expand possibilities of service due to automatic adding of capacities.