Cloud Hosting

Cloud native technology and the role of CNCF

Lets start with a brief recap on cloud native and CNCF Cloud Native Computing Foundation. With the introduction of 5G, new use cases drive the need for designing applications based on containers and service-based architecture to address some technology gaps associated with virtualization. The most important technology gaps involve smoother software upgrades, automation and the realization of a CI/CD software pipeline to end customers.

In the center of cloud native technology development is CNCF, an open source community driving the adoption of the cloud native paradigm across industries by fostering collaboration between the industrys top developers, end users and vendors. Since CNCF is such a huge community, the focus on the telecom industry has been limited. But now with the formation of the Telecom User Group (A Special Interest Group) within CNCF, Ericsson has taken a leading role in telecom related discussions in the community.

The current industry trend is to deploy Kubernetes in virtual machines hosted on a virtualized platform within an NFVI solution. This deployment approach works well as an intermediate step for introducing cloud native applications, but deploying Kubernetes in virtual environments adds additional cost and complexity to the cloud infrastructure.

In order to further simplify the deployment of Kubernetes and to leverage the full benefits and efficiency promise of the cloud native technology, the underlying cloud infrastructure needs to be optimized. Thats why Ericsson recently launched a new cloud infrastructure solution optimized for cloud native applications.

The solution, Ericsson Cloud Native Infrastructure, is using a bare metal cloud native architecture which means that no virtualization layer is needed in the cloud stack. Instead, cloud native applications are deployed in containers running directly on the bare metal cloud, which results in a radical simplification of the network implementation. It is important to note that virtual network functions (VNFs) will be around for years to come, and they will continue to run on NFVI.

Ericsson Cloud Native Infrastructure enables a fully automated deployment of Kubernetes layer over bare metal servers without the need for an underlying virtualized layer. This evolution in NFVI is a huge step forward in simplifying the deployment and operations of telecom cloud native applications.

Ericsson estimates that the TCO savings for deploying Kubernetes on a bare metal compared to a virtualized infrastructure can be as high as 30 percent, depending on application and configuration. Ericsson Cloud Native Infrastructure will be available on the market later this year to support CSPs 5G and cloud native introduction. View this brief video about Ericsson Cloud Native Infrastructure summarizing the next step in cloud infrastructure evolution.

Watch the Telecom TV interview where Peter Wrndle, expert on NFV at Business Unit Digital Services at Ericsson discusses how far CSP's has come in adoption to cloud native technologies.

Go here to see the original:
Benefits of Kubernetes on bare metal cloud infrastructure - Ericsson