Cloud-native architectures, specifically containers and schedulers, help deliver value. But how do they do it, and what problems are we trying to solve? Explore the motivations behind these questions in this high-level presentation.

1. Thinking About Containers
Some thoughts on the modern datacenter
Sebastian Weigand: DevOps and Cloud PSE, VMware

2. A brief history of the datacenter

3. Datacenter 1.0
Mainframes
Computation

4. Datacenter 2.0
Many x86 servers
General-purpose computation

5. Datacenter 3.0
Virtualization of hardware
Consolidation

6. Datacenter 3.5
Cloud computing
IaaS and SDDC

7. Datacenter 4.0
Containers and clusters
Schedulers

8. A brief history of business needs

9. Datacenter 1.0
Technology is new
“How do we use these machines?”
“Can a machine do this task?”
“How can we integrate?”

10. Datacenter 2.0
Technology is needed
“We need some computers.”
“We need an application.”
“We need a sysadmin.”

11. Datacenter 3.0
Technology is becoming vital
“We need some VMs.”
“We need applications.”
“We need IT people.”

12. Datacenter 3.5
Technology is dominant
“We have a lot of VMs.”
“We have a lot of applications.”
“We need cloud/devops people.”

13. Datacenter 4.0
IT management is key
“We need to manage our VMs.”
“We need to manage our apps.”
“We still need devops people.”

14. Driving motivations

15. Setting the stage: Modern IT shops
Symptoms
Most are between DC 2.0 - 3.5
Many want “cloud computing”
Many don’t know what “cloud computing” is…
Many don’t have proper processes/procedures
Many are still “fire-fighting” everyday ops
Causes
Departmental silos
Heard it from Gartner / Forrester / etc…
Don’t fully understand how IT delivers value
Manual processes are easy to implement
Manual processes fail

16. Issues with current thinking
Bad thought
“I need a VM.”
“I need to change a VM.”
“I need a maintenance window.”
Good thought
“I need to run an application.”
“My application isn’t running well.”
“I need to update my application.”

17. How we solve this today
Problems
“I need to run an application.”
“My application isn’t running well.”
“I need to update my application.”
Solutions
Leverage CM, orchestration, and provisioning
Auto-scaling, preemptive provisioning
CM orchestration, “bakery” workflow

18. How we solve this with containers and schedulers
Problems
“I need to run an application.”
“My application isn’t running well.”
“I need to update my application.”
Solutions
Scheduler runs your applications
Scheduler scales your applications
Scheduler deploys new applications

19. CNA solves other problems, too

20. Additional benefits with CNA
Problem
“I need to configure my OS.”
“I need high-availability.”
“I need to scale my CM system.”
“I need to scale my multi-tiered app.”
CNA Solution
Use a minimal OS, like Photon, CoreOS, Atomic
Tell the scheduler, it will run it
Build artifacts, deploy with blue/green
Let the scheduler do the work

21. Wrap-up

22. Task-Focused
CNA is optimized for
getting things done
The farther away you are from
achieving a business goal, the less
efficient you are.

23. Infrastructure by
itself is pointless

24. Containers are
application-centric

25. Schedulers manage
your containers.

26. CNA Advantage
Spend less time on
lower-level things
The CNA methodology allows you
to spend less time on traditional
tasks of provisioning, configuring,
and orchestrating…
And allows you to spend more time
running and improving upon your
applications.

27. Robert A. Heinlein
“Progress isn't made by early risers.
It's made by lazy men trying to find
easier ways to do something.”