What Is Cloud Native? A Guide to Cloud-Native Application Development

Cloud Native is an approach to application development designed to fully leverage the cloud. Moving an existing application to the cloud is one thing; designing for the cloud is another.

Definition

According to the CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation): Cloud Native technologies empower organizations to build and run scalable applications in modern, dynamic environments (public, private, hybrid cloud).

Building Blocks

1. Containerization

Applications and their dependencies are packaged in containers:

FROM node:20-alpine
WORKDIR /app
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm ci --production
COPY . .
EXPOSE 3000
CMD ["node", "server.js"]

Benefits: portability, isolation, and lightweight (much less resource usage than VMs).

2. Microservices

The application is split into small, independent services, each with its own database and lifecycle.

3. Orchestration

Automatic management of containers via Kubernetes: auto-scaling, self-healing, load balancing, rolling updates.

4. Serverless

Running code without server management:

exports.processOrder = async (req, res) => {
  const order = req.body;
  await validateOrder(order);
  await saveToDatabase(order);
  res.status(200).send({ success: true });
};

Benefits: zero server management, pay-per-use pricing, automatic scaling.

5. DevOps & CI/CD

Continuous integration and delivery pipelines for rapid iteration.

Cloud Native vs Cloud Enabled

| Feature | Cloud Enabled | Cloud Native | |---------|--------------|-------------| | Approach | Lift-and-shift | Design for cloud | | Scaling | Vertical (bigger server) | Horizontal (more instances) | | Architecture | Monolithic | Microservices/Serverless | | Deployment | Manual/semi-auto | Fully automated CI/CD | | State | Stateful | Stateless | | Database | Single, central | Per-service |

12-Factor App Principles

Heroku's 12 principles for cloud native applications:

1. Codebase — One codebase, multiple deploys
2. Dependencies — Explicitly declare dependencies
3. Config — Store config in environment variables
4. Backing Services — Treat external services as attached resources
5. Build, Release, Run — Strictly separate stages
6. Processes — Run as stateless processes
7. Port Binding — Export services via port binding
8. Concurrency — Scale out via the process model
9. Disposability — Fast startup, graceful shutdown
10. Dev/Prod Parity — Keep environments similar
11. Logs — Treat logs as event streams
12. Admin Processes — Run admin tasks as one-off processes

Cloud Providers Compared

| Service | AWS | GCP | Azure | |---------|-----|-----|-------| | Containers | ECS/EKS | Cloud Run/GKE | ACA/AKS | | Serverless | Lambda | Cloud Functions | Azure Functions | | Database | RDS/Aurora | Cloud SQL | Azure SQL | | Storage | S3 | Cloud Storage | Blob Storage |

Conclusion

Cloud Native is not just a technology choice, it's an architectural mindset. If you want to fully benefit from the cloud's flexibility, scalability, and cost advantages, design your applications with cloud native principles.

Learn Cloud Native and DevOps practices on the DevOps career path at LabLudus.