According to data from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), companies are already using cloud-native technologies extensively, and container applications have become the norm. In 2019, 84% of companies used containers in production, compared with only 3% in 2016. According to Ali Dharma Academy’s latest technology trend forecast for 2021, cloud native reshapes the IT technology system.
Now stepping into the era of cloud computing 2.0, how do cloud vendors use cloud native technologies? Among them, Kingsoft Cloud opens the 2021 cloud native "good start": Kingsoft Cloud vice president and partner Qian Yifeng officially released a new cloud native panorama, cloud native product matrix, and two serverless products (containers) at the media communication meeting on January 6. Example KCI and Serverless Container Service KSK).
Looking back on the nine-year development history and sticking to the original intention of All in Cloud
In 2012, Kingsoft Cloud was established.
In 2014, Lei Jun announced the All in Cloud strategy to fully deploy cloud services.
In 2016, Kingsoft Cloud became the first echelon video cloud service provider in China.
In 2018, on the basis of game cloud and video cloud, we will continue to enter the vertical industry cloud, deploying government and enterprise, finance, medical and other fields.
According to a survey by Frost & Sullivan, Kingsoft Cloud is the third largest Internet cloud service provider in China. Based on IaaS and PaaS service revenue, Kingsoft Cloud's market share in 2019 reached 5.4%.
In the first half of 2020, Kingsoft Cloud was listed on NASDAQ in the United States.
Kingsoft Cloud has been in the cloud native for a long time. As early as 2016, Kingsoft Cloud launched swarm-based container solutions and continued to improve the development and operation of container-based cloud native related products. At present, Kingsoft Cloud has formed a zero-loss bare metal server infrastructure centered on container products, providing core cloud-native technology capabilities such as microservice engines, service grids, DevOps, and functional computing, and is based on a cloud-native security system. The upper-level business provides a cloud-native layout focusing on the cloud-native environment of high-value scenarios.
When talking about Kingsoft Cloud’s cloud native development strategy compared with other cloud vendors, “we will focus more on it,” Qian Yifeng said. From the above development process, we can also get a glimpse. Kingsoft Cloud mainly starts with vertical industries such as games, video, government affairs, finance, and medical care, and expands services around large customers.
Two new serverless products released, perfecting cloud native application scenarios
Following the release of three new cloud-native products (new bare metal servers, cloud servers, and speed cloud disks) in October last year, Kingsoft Cloud upgraded its cloud-native products and launched two new serverless products, container instance KCI and serverless container service KSK. Talking about the significance behind the launch of these two products, Qian Yifeng said that firstly, because customers have higher requirements for infrastructure capabilities, a new generation of IaaS infrastructure needs to be established; the second is to continue to improve cloud-native application scenarios.
He further added that cloud computing 2.0 poses a higher challenge to infrastructure. In order to provide a more cost-effective underlying infrastructure, the above two new products were launched. As the development efficiency increases, the developer’s use of the technology will also change. For example, when the original virtual machine is used to create a cloud disk, it will be created as many as it takes. When the service is containerized and micro-serviced, the frequency of container destruction and creation It will be significantly improved, and the management requirements for cloud disks will also become higher, and the scene catalyzes technological changes.
(1) Container instance KCI
According to CNCF's cloud native development status report, there are now more than 4.7 million cloud native developers worldwide, and more than 1.7 million developers use Kubernetes. Kubernetes is the preferred management platform for large-scale container and microservice scenarios.
According to Kingsoft Cloud, the traditional Kubernetes container service, as the de facto standard in the current container orchestration field, has powerful functions, but related technologies have developed rapidly and are more complex to apply. The operation and maintenance cluster infrastructure has a certain threshold for users. At the same time, when users purchase resources, they need to pay for resource utilization. The minute-level elastic expansion is a waste of time and cost. How to provide container lightweight services has become an application trend.
Based on this, the serverless container product container implements Kingsoft Cloud Container Instance (KCI). While retaining the core capabilities of Kubernetes for automatic deployment and management of containers, users can easily deploy, manage, and expand containerization without operating and maintaining the underlying infrastructure. application.
The container instance KCI has 4 advantages:
1. Simple and easy to use: Users can run containers without operating and maintaining the underlying clusters and servers, which greatly reduces the cost of using containers and the threshold for using Kubernetes;
2. Security isolation: Kata Container secure container technology is adopted to provide virtual machine-level security isolation Capability, and the start-up speed of the container at the same time;
3. Low cost: apply for container specifications on demand, and charge according to the actual number of seconds used, which greatly reduces the cost of users using resources;
4. Ecological compatibility: container instances and Kingsoft Cloud Other products are deeply integrated, such as VPC, SLB, EIP, etc. The container instance supports access to the Kubernetes cluster through the Virtual Kubelet component, and supports the container instance as a Pod in the Kubernetes cluster for scheduling, so that the container instance has Kubernetes orchestration capabilities.
(2) Serverless container service
Kingsoft Cloud spares no effort to provide users with lightweight tools. Compared with traditional Kubernetes clusters, Serverless Container Service (Kingsoft Cloud Serverless Kubernetes, KSK) is a serverless Kubernetes cluster product that provides Serverless services based on containers and Kubernetes.
Users can deploy container applications in the cluster without node management and capacity planning, without operating and maintaining the underlying infrastructure, and paying on-demand for resource usage. At the same time, it provides Kubernetes orchestration capabilities to fundamentally solve the complexity of Kubernetes in a serverless manner, and reduce the difficulty of using Kubernetes clusters for users.
"Cloud native applications are in their infancy"
Talking about the past and present of cloud native, Qian Yifeng said that although the concept of cloud native was not formed overnight, from the early exploration, everyone went from the pursuit of continuous integration to continuous deployment to the pursuit of microservices, making development lighter and improving development efficiency. , These technological pursuits and attempts have always existed. Among them, the cloud-native related tools and software standards gradually became popular before they became popular.
Qian Yifeng said: The current application of cloud native technology is still at a relatively early stage. Many companies have begun to use Kubernetes clusters to solve the management problem of computing resources, making it more convenient and efficient to manage computing resources.
In the development of microservices, the country has gradually entered the state, and has begun to improve development efficiency through the microservices of software design. In addition, in terms of hybrid cloud management, attention has been paid to the interconnection between the built-in IDC cluster and the cloud cluster. Generally speaking, cloud-native applications are still at a relatively early stage.
Nevertheless, he firmly believes that "cloud native will replace the existing IaaS infrastructure in the future", and a sign of true cloud native maturity is that 50%-70% of the software we use is built on cloud native.