DevOps-dedicated software delivery platform company CloudBees has made its cloud-native DevSecOps platform available on AWS, powered by Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS). But what is Amazon EKS, how does this technology fit into the wider frame of reference for natively developed applications in the always-on world of cloud… and what does it all mean for software application development engineers and their DevSecOps counterparts?
Amazon EKS is a managed service designed to eliminate the need to install, operate and maintain a developer team’s own Kubernetes control plane (the element of Kubernetes container orchestration technology that manage manages clusters of containers and the resources associated with them such as worker nodes and pods) – either on-premises or indeed on AWS.
As Armo reminds us here, “The Kubernetes control plane receives information such as cluster activity, internal and external requests etc. Based on these factors, the control plane moves the cluster resources from their current state to the desired state. The control plane consists of five significant components, each serving a specific purpose. These components work in synergy and ensure clusters are running optimally.”
Enough EKS background then, what is CloudBees doing?
Continuous pipelines
The company says its platform is designed to natively execute end-to-end GitHub Actions-style Domain Specific Language (DSL) workflows running on Tekton (a Google-developed Kubernetes-native open source framework for creating continuous integration & continuous delivery (CI/CD) systems) and then orchestrate existing CI/CD solutions, starting with Jenkins and CloudBees CI and also including Circle CI, GitHub Actions, Bamboo, JFrog pipeline, ArgoCD and Octopus Deploy. GitHub Actions itself is a CI/CD platform that allows developers to automate their build, test and deployment pipeline
“We’re delighted to expand our relationship with AWS to offer a more flexible array of possibilities for any organisation,” said Shawn Ahmed, chief product officer, CloudBees. “Beyond using the power of AWS, we’ve ensured that enterprises can weave in their existing CI/CD solutions and tools, beginning with industry favourites [such as] Jenkins, as well as CloudBees CI, our enterprise version of Jenkins.”
It’s all about the cloud
What this story underlines is the need for organisations to a) start cloud migration projects in areas of the business that may have not yet been elevated to SaaS-model computing accelerators and, crucially, b) this is the wider development of extended tools that align to the continuous universe of cloud-centric data services.
As such, CloudBees talks about its integration with AWS and how it aims to help organisation use the power of AWS to maximize the efficiency and speed of CI/CD pipelines with key services like Amazon EKS, Amazon Elastic Container Registry (Amazon ECR – an AWS managed secure and scalable container image registry service that is ) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).
Platform engineering teams can integrate all their siloed DevSecOps technology and tools into what CloudBees likes to call ‘golden paths’ for developers. This perhaps over-cute term is meant to describe and denote deployments where DevSecOps processes become nearly invisible.
Down the golden path
Users can manage and monitor workflows combining the CloudBees platform’s DevSecOps data model with the power of the Amazon OpenSearch Service – an AWS-managed service that lets developers (and DevSecOps teams) run and scale OpenSearch clusters without having to worry about managing, monitoring and maintaining the infrastructure needed to do so, or indeed having to build in-depth expertise in operating OpenSearch clusters.
As an additional contextual reminder, OpenSearch is a completely open source and community-driven distributed search and analytics suite (offered under the Apache 2.0-licence) used for a whole range of developer and operations use cases such as real-time application monitoring, log analytics and website search.
CloudBees also says that teams can make use of multiple usage models and use the company’s multi-tenant SaaS or get a dedicated single-tenant SaaS instance installed in their organisation’s region of preference. For organisations seeking enhanced privacy and control, the platform can be integrated into a virtual private cloud (VPC) instance.
“Cloud migration is no longer an option but a necessity for modern enterprises. By building this new platform on AWS, we are ensuring that our users can gain the maximum benefit of cloud-native DevSecOps without any hurdles. All this while providing a bridge to the Jenkins world,” added Sacha Labourey, co-founder and chief strategy officer, CloudBees.
What all the buzz phrases and buzzwords (pun possibly intended, apologies) on show here illustrate is just how complex cloud-native deployment can be, just how convoluted cloud migration can be and just how particularised, explicit and intricate the AWS total toolset is – with almost every function requiring a little extra colour and clarity to understand how they all work and fit together. Cloud is powerful, but it’s still a big leap, simplification and automation will no doubt further come to the fore as we move forward.
Free image use above: Wikipedia Commons
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