☁️ Cloud-Native Considerations

Welcome back to The Code Hut Distributed Systems series! In this post, we’ll explore cloud-native concepts, best practices for containerized applications, and how to leverage Kubernetes and Docker in distributed systems.

Why Cloud-Native Matters

Cloud-native design allows your services to be scalable, resilient, and easy to deploy in cloud environments.

1. Containers and Docker

• Package applications with all dependencies for consistent environments
• Lightweight and portable compared to virtual machines
• Example: Dockerfile for a Java microservice

FROM openjdk:17-jdk-slim
COPY target/order-service.jar /app/order-service.jar
WORKDIR /app
ENTRYPOINT ["java", "-jar", "order-service.jar"]

2. Kubernetes Basics

• Automated deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications
• Concepts: Pods, Deployments, Services, ConfigMaps, Secrets
• Example: Deployment for a Java microservice

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: order-service
spec:
  replicas: 3
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: order-service
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: order-service
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: order-service
        image: your-docker-image
        ports:
        - containerPort: 8080

3. Cloud-Native Best Practices

• Design stateless services for easy scaling
• Use externalized configuration (ConfigMaps, environment variables)
• Enable health checks and liveness probes
• Monitor and log centrally
• Automate deployments with CI/CD pipelines

4. Example: Scaling and Updates

Rolling updates in Kubernetes allow updating services without downtime:

• Update Deployment image
• Kubernetes gradually replaces old pods with new ones
• Ensure readiness probes are configured to prevent downtime

Next in the Series

In the next post, we’ll discuss Distributed System Security to protect data, services, and communication.

Label for this post: Distributed Systems