For many businesses looking to embrace modern business practices, deliver and scale faster, adopting a Cloud Native mindset and architecture makes sense. In this talk Nicki Watt, from OpenCredo, will explore the realities of making that journey for a number of clients. Far from being a smooth journey to the promised land, during this talk you will also learn about the numerous detours, bumps and challenges encountered along the way. Microservices, Kubernetes, Success, but also Bandages and Crutches; This talk is for you if you want to gain some pragmatic insight into what is entailed with such endeavours.

1. JOURNEYS TO
CLOUD NATIVE ARCHITECTURE:
SUN, SEA AND EMERGENCIES
Nicki Watt, CTO - OpenCredo
@techiewatt
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2. @techiewatt
What’s with the Title?
!3@techiewatt

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ABOUT ME / OPENCREDO
▸CTO at OpenCredo
▸Hands on software development
consultancy
▸Cloud Native; Data Engineering & ML
!4

4. @techiewatt
AGENDA
▸Overview - The Dream
▸Issues and Challenges
▸Principles for Success
!5

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Overview - The Dream
!6

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THE CLOUD NATIVE DREAM (BUSINESS DRIVERS)
!8
Micro
services
CI /
CD
DevOps
Containers
Uses
Cloud
Native
Architecture
…
Tools &
Techniques

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▸Faster Time to
Market
▸Allow business to
grow (Scalability)
THE CLOUD NATIVE DREAM (BUSINESS DRIVERS)
!9
Micro
services
CI /
CD
DevOps
Containers
Uses
Business
Objectives
Cloud
Native
ArchitectureTo
Achieve
…
Tools &
Techniques
Cost also a factor …

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Micro
services
CI /
CD
DevOps
Containers
Uses
Business
Objectives
Cloud
Native
ArchitectureTo
Achieve
THE CLOUD NATIVE DREAM (BUSINESS DRIVERS)
…
Tools &
Techniques
People,
Teams &
ProcessesImpacts
On
▸Faster Time to
Market
▸Allow business to
grow (Scalability)
Cost also a factor …

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Check In …

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Underlying
Challenge:
Too Much
Baggage
Photo by Laura Gilmore (Flickr)

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▸Needs A Different
▸Approach
▸Tooling
▸Skills
THE CLOUD NATIVE JOURNEY
Photo by Laura Gilmore (Flickr)

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Departure …
Arrival …
The Holiday Begins …

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Issues & Challenges

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#1
The Jone’s
(Tackling Too Much
Too Quickly)

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#1
Sunburn
(Tackling Too Much
Too Quickly)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/timparkinson/1312737125

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▸Taking on the world from day 1
▸Compromise - Do minimum get away with
▸Operating under a false sense of security
▸Only happy path testing
▸Inconsistent environments
▸The single instance fallacy
!18
TACKLING TOO MUCH, TOO QUICKLY
Can’t expect to gain a
fully rounded & reliable
cloud native system overnight!

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▸Many Moving Parts
▸App Architecture
▸Ops
▸Infrastructure
!19
TACKLING TOO MUCH, TOO QUICKLY

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▸Quality is Compromised
▸Pain is delayed - focusing on easy not risky
▸Operate under a false sense of security
▸Only happy path testing (platform testing neglected)
▸Lack of robust CI/CD - Inconsistent environments
▸
!20
TACKLING TOO MUCH, TOO QUICKLY - OBSERVATIONS

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▸Quality is Compromised
▸Pain is delayed - focusing on easy not risky
▸Operate under a false sense of security
▸Only happy path testing (platform testing neglected)
▸Lack of robust CI/CD - Inconsistent environments
▸
!21
image credit: http://
www.guinnessworldrec
ords.com/world-
records/most-tennis-
balls-held-in-the-
mouth-dog
TACKLING TOO MUCH, TOO QUICKLY - OBSERVATIONS

21. @techiewatt
▸Quality is Compromised
▸Pain is delayed - focusing on easy not risky
▸Operate under a false sense of security
▸Only happy path testing (platform testing neglected)
▸Lack of robust CI/CD - Inconsistent environments
▸
!22
TACKLING TOO MUCH, TOO QUICKLY - OBSERVATIONS

22. @techiewatt
▸Quality is Compromised
▸Pain is delayed - focusing on easy not risky
▸Operate under a false sense of security
▸Only happy path testing (platform testing neglected)
▸Lack of robust CI/CD - Inconsistent environments
▸
!23
TACKLING TOO MUCH, TOO QUICKLY - OBSERVATIONS

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Slow Down
Take Baby Steps
Focus On Quality!
!24
TACKLING TOO MUCH, TOO QUICKLY

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#2
Deepak and
friends
(Having a
Surface Level
Understanding)

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#2
Caught In Deep
Water
(Relying on a
Surface Level
Understanding)

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▸Taking on the world from day 1
▸Compromise - Do minimum get away with
▸Operating under a false sense of security
▸Only happy path testing
▸Inconsistent environments
▸The single instance fallacy
!27
Distributed Systems are hard.
The devil is in the detail
And the detail matters
RELYING ON A SURFACE LEVEL UNDERSTANDING

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▸Skills & Real World Experience
▸Kubernetes in 24 hours != Expert
▸Outsource commodity, in-house business value
▸Missing out on optimising for the Bigger Picture
▸Artificial Boundaries
▸Artificial Centralisation
!28
RELYING ON A SURFACE LEVEL UNDERSTANDING

28. @techiewatt
▸Skills & Real World Experience
▸Kubernetes in 24 hours != Expert
▸Outsource commodity, in-house business value
▸Missing out on optimising for the Bigger Picture
▸Artificial Boundaries
▸Artificial Centralisation
!29
RELYING ON A SURFACE LEVEL UNDERSTANDING

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▸Skills & Real World Experience
▸Kubernetes in 24 hours != Expert
▸Outsource commodity, in-house business value
▸Missing out on optimising for the Bigger Picture
▸Artificial Boundaries
▸Artificial Centralisation
RELYING ON A SURFACE LEVEL UNDERSTANDING

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▸Other War Stories …
▸DRY Dependency Hell
▸The Singularity Fallacy
▸Shallow Data (ref John Allspaw)
RELYING ON A SURFACE LEVEL UNDERSTANDING

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Gain basic skills & expertise
Make commodity problems
somebody else’s
Learn by
Optimising for the bigger picture
RELYING ON A SURFACE LEVEL UNDERSTANDING

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#3
Susie & Jacob
assd asda
d
(Ineffective Tools &
Processes)

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#3
Between a rock
and a hard
place
(Ineffective Tools &
Processes)

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Me
Simultaneously
petrified & enjoying
myself …

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▸Often traditional tools just don’t cut it
▸Mileage varies …
▸Slow you down
▸Take you the long way round
▸Downright hurt you in long run
!37
INEFFECTIVE TOOLS & PROCESSES

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▸Mileage varies …
▸Slow you down
▸Take you the long way round
▸Downright hurt you in long run
▸More Forward Looking
INEFFECTIVE TOOLS & PROCESSES

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▸Slow you down
▸Unnecessarily Heavy tooling
(Some Enterprise Databases,
Base Container Images)
INEFFECTIVE TOOLS & PROCESSES

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INEFFECTIVE TOOLS & PROCESSES
▸Take you the long way around
▸DIY or “Build Your Own” category

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INEFFECTIVE TOOLS & PROCESSES
▸Downright hurt you
▸No API
▸Non Automatable
▸Horizontally challenged

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▸More forward looking …
▸Imperative —> Declarative
INEFFECTIVE TOOLS & PROCESSES

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INEFFECTIVE TOOLS & PROCESSES - SO WHAT SHOULD YOU USE?
Guidance from
CNCF

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▸Taking on the world from day 1
▸Compromise - Do minimum get away with
▸Operating under a false sense of security
▸Only happy path testing
▸Inconsistent environments
▸The single instance fallacy
!44
Considered Thought & Pragmatism …
(CNCF Recommendations - good start)
Rule of Thumb:
Automation, API & Horizontally scale
friendly
INEFFECTIVE TOOLS & PROCESSES - SO WHAT SHOULD YOU USE?

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#4
The Smith’s
(Ignoring
Security)
@techiewatt

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#4
Living Dangerously
(Ignoring
Security)
@techiewatt

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IGNORING SECURITY CONCERNS
▸Enterprise Security has not kept up
▸No excuse to ignore it though!
▸Devs/Ops are the new Gatekeepers
▸Help a CISO, help yourself
▸Provide tools/reports to help understand new world
▸Shift Security Left, make it a 1st class citizen

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IGNORING SECURITY CONCERNS
▸Enterprise Security has not kept up
▸No excuse to ignore it though!
▸Devs/Ops are the new Gatekeepers
▸Help a CISO, help yourself
▸Provide tools/reports to help understand new world
▸Shift Security Left, make it a 1st class citizen
DevOps
CI CD

47. @techiewatt
▸Shift Security Left
▸No excuse to ignore it though!
▸Devs/Ops are the new Gatekeepers
▸Help a CISO, help yourself
▸Provide tools/reports to help understand new world
▸Shift Security Left, make it a 1st class citizen
!49
IGNORING SECURITY CONCERNS
DevSecOps
<— Shifting Security to the left<— Shift Security Left

48. @techiewatt
▸Get Security Insight Out
▸No excuse to ignore it though!
▸Devs/Ops are the new Gatekeepers
▸Help a CISO, help yourself
▸Provide tools/reports to help understand new world
▸Shift Security Left, make it a 1st class citizen
!50
IGNORING SECURITY CONCERNS
DevSecOps
<— Shifting Security to the leftGet Security Insight Out —>
Deploy
Security
Runtime
Security

49. @techiewatt
▸Get Security Insight Out
▸Help a CISO, help yourself
▸Provide tools/reports to help understand
new world
▸Help a CISO, help yourself
▸Provide tools/reports to help understand new world
▸Shift Security Left, make it a 1st class citizen
!51
IGNORING SECURITY CONCERNS

50. @techiewatt !52

51. @techiewatt
▸Taking on the world from day 1
▸Compromise - Do minimum get away with
▸Operating under a false sense of security
▸Only happy path testing
▸Inconsistent environments
▸The single instance fallacy
!53
<— Shift Security Left
Get Security Insights Out —>
Engage don’t enrage!
IGNORING SECURITY CONCERNS

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#5
The Unexpected
Accident
(Not Anticipating
Failure)

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NOT ANTICIPATING FAILURE
▸Test app & platform level sad paths
▸Observability
▸Chaos Engineering
▸Optimise for Recovery & Learning!

54. @techiewatt !56
NOT ANTICIPATING FAILURE
▸Test app & platform level sad paths
▸Observability
▸Chaos Engineering
▸Optimise for Recovery & Learning!

55. @techiewatt !57
NOT ANTICIPATING FAILURE
▸Test app & platform level sad paths
▸Observability
▸First address unnecessary Chaos …
then do … Chaos Engineering
▸Optimise for Recovery & Learning!

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NOT ANTICIPATING FAILURE
▸Test app & platform level sad paths
▸Observability
▸First address unnecessary Chaos …
then do … Chaos Engineering
▸Optimise for Recovery!

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Failure is only really failure
if you fail to learn from it

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Summary &
Principles for
Success
!60

59. @techiewatt !61
▸Needs A Different
▸Approach
▸Tooling
▸Skills
THE CLOUD NATIVE JOURNEY
Micro
services
CI /
CD
DevOps
Containers
Uses
Business
Objectives
Cloud
Native
ArchitectureTo
Achieve
…
Tools &
Techniques
People,
Teams &
ProcessesImpacts
On
!61

60. @techiewatt
▸Needs To Cohesively
Address:
▸App Architecture
▸Ops
▸Infrastructure
!62
THE CLOUD NATIVE JOURNEY

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PRINCIPLES FOR SUCCESS
▸ Don’t take on too much too quickly
▸ Acquire enough expertise to journey safely
▸ Choose your Tools wisely
▸ Engage don’t enrage Security
▸ Anticipate, Plan and Actively Test for Failure

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Thanks!
@techiewatt
Get in touch if you’re looking for a partner
to help on your Cloud Native Journey!