KCNACloud Native Architecture
Cloud Native Architecture
Cloud native is a design approach that fully exploits the advantages of cloud computing: elasticity, automation, resilience, and distributed systems.
CNCF & the Cloud Native Landscape
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) hosts and fosters projects across the cloud native landscape including Kubernetes, Prometheus, Envoy, Helm, Argo, and many more.
Cloud native principles:
- Microservices — decompose into small, independently deployable services
- Containers — portable, isolated packaging
- Dynamic orchestration — automated placement and management
- DevOps culture — CI/CD, infrastructure as code, shared ownership
The Twelve-Factor App
A methodology for building cloud-native apps:
| Factor | Description |
|---|---|
| Codebase | One codebase, many deploys |
| Dependencies | Explicitly declare and isolate |
| Config | Store config in environment variables |
| Backing services | Treat as attached resources |
| Build/Release/Run | Strictly separate stages |
| Processes | Execute as stateless processes |
| Port binding | Export services via port binding |
| Concurrency | Scale via the process model |
| Disposability | Fast startup, graceful shutdown |
| Dev/prod parity | Keep environments as similar as possible |
| Logs | Treat as event streams |
| Admin processes | Run as one-off processes |
Microservices vs Monolith
| Monolith | Microservices | |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment | All-or-nothing | Independent per service |
| Scaling | Scale everything | Scale only what needs it |
| Failure isolation | One bug can crash all | Failures are contained |
| Complexity | Simple initially | Network, observability complexity |
Service Mesh
A service mesh (Istio, Linkerd, Consul Connect) handles cross-cutting concerns:
- mTLS between services
- Traffic management (retries, circuit breaking, canary)
- Observability (traces, metrics per service-to-service call)
Implemented via sidecar proxies (Envoy) injected into each Pod.
Serverless & Functions
- Serverless: no server management, pay per invocation
- FaaS (Function as a Service): AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions
- Knative: serverless framework on Kubernetes
Helm: Kubernetes Package Manager
Helm packages K8s manifests into charts:
helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami
helm install my-postgres bitnami/postgresql
helm upgrade my-postgres bitnami/postgresql --set auth.password=newpass
helm rollback my-postgres 1
Summary
- Cloud native means containers + dynamic orchestration + microservices + DevOps
- CNCF hosts the key projects in the ecosystem
- Service meshes add reliability and observability at the network layer
- Helm simplifies deploying complex K8s applications