Considering the phenomenal growth of open source over the last decade, it wouldn’t be surprising to know that open source technologies are now commonly used in traditional on-premise systems. But traditional on-premise systems are slowly going obsolete today as the cloud dominates.

Businesses are now investing in moving their workloads to the cloud which will require the usage of certain specific tools. This is where open source comes in. When shifting to the cloud, it’s best to start with great management tools. There are cloud-compatible open source tools specifically designed for resource management. Many companies also prefer open source software development to custom-build a tool that fits perfectly well with their business ecosystem.

This blog lists a few effective open source cloud management tools that will make things easier for a business migrating to the cloud.
 

OneOps

 
Rhymes well with DevOps, doesn’t it?

That’s because the tool was built around the concept of DevOps and is ideal for a multi-cloud architecture. Released under the Apache 2.0 license by Walmart Labs, OneOps is officially described as a cloud management cum application lifecycle management platform. As such it rivals popular tools like Chef, Puppet etc.

OneOps is useful for all clouds that leverage OpenStack cloud environments be it public, private, or hybrid. It also goes well with Microsoft Azure services or AWS. With OneOps, a business will be able to create virtual instances, maintain them, and configure security settings in addition. But that isn’t all it can do with its biggest feature being facilitating application migration from one cloud to another.
 

Docker

 
It won’t be wrong to assume that Docker is the world’s most popular container technology. The open source technology is already considered a premium standard as a platform for container development as well as deployment.

With Docker’s open source orchestration services – Machine, Swarm, and Compose, organizations will find container management much easier and more effective.

• Machine – To automate Docker container provisioning. Facilitates integration with Apache Mesos granting capabilities of bigger-scale.
• Swarm – To scale container-enabled applications with a pool of container hosts. Can be used to resolve cluster management issues including scheduling.
• Compose – To link containers together so they function as a group. Makes managing widely distributed container clusters easier.

Kubernetes

 
The most dominant force to be reckoned with in the container management sector for public and private clouds, Google’s Kubernetes is a celebrated open source container orchestration system with its open source framework even adopted by many tech giants including Microsoft.

With Kubernetes, organizations can distribute their containers across a cluster of cloud machines while the technology efficiently deals with scaling and service management issues. Kubernetes is compatible with a plethora of cloud and data center services including Azure, AWS, and Apache Mesos.
 

Apache Mesos

 
Mesos, another open source tool, is also a great option for cloud management. What makes it unique is that it also makes it easier to manage traditional hardware and software along with clouds akin to how a single computer is managed. It’s sometimes referred to as a ‘distributed systems kernel’ that facilitates effective management of thousands of servers using containers. Mesos complements large, distributed databases like Hadoop.
 

Conclusion

 
Over the next couple of years, new cloud computing technologies and trends will emerge and several approaches your organization uses now may require drastic changes. Additionally, there will be advancements in open source technologies to consider as well; like when the advent of the MEAN stack led to the slow decline in demand for LAMP development services.

The complexity of open source cloud management tools is likely to go up a notch in the coming times. This means organizations should keep themselves updated on how things are changing around their business’ cloud ecosystem to figure out optimum approaches and the rights tools to derive the best results.

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Containers play a vital role in software development for getting the software to run reliably in various computing environments; from a developer’s computer to a test environment, and staging and production. In addition to this, container technology is mostly adopted at present by companies to achieve developer efficiency.

When it comes to container technology, Docker is still the most popular choice. However, Kubernetes isn’t that far behind either. The open source project continues to be a reliable choice for container orchestration and management. The most recent version of the container cluster manager includes a plethora of beneficial features that will help teams optimize container usage in organizations.

Brian Gracely, Red Hat’s Director of Product Strategy, says the present state of containers has hit a tipping point, prompting the need for businesses to be faster and more responsive as to what’s going on in the market. Companies end up relying on individuals to keep the systems secure, update, and scale them appropriately. Kubernetes aims to automate this according to Gracely.

He also added that after leveraging out of big global web-scale cloud providers, Kubernetes has become applicable to lots of vertical industries and businesses. Companies can either apply Kubernetes to a new project or find a way to add it to their portfolios.
 

Key features of Kubernetes 1.5

 
According to the Kubernetes team, version 1.5 will benefit those who want to run a distributed database on Kubernetes. It will include solutions that could help guarantee application disruption service-level objectives (SLO) for stateful and stateless applications. Kubernetes 1.5 is also unique because PodDisruptionBudget and StatefulSet moved into beta.

The Kubernetes team mentioned that these features will make it easier to deploy and scale stateful applications, and perform cluster operations like node upgrade without violating application disruption service-level objectives.

Basically, with StatefulSet, organizations can use applications in a Kubernetes environment and run them in containers, while customers will have a consistent platform without compromise in functionality. In addition, users will not be forced to rewrite applications while using containers.

The PodDisruptionBudget beta is simply an API object that’s meant to specify the minimum percentage (or number) of replicas of a collection of pods that must be up. It basically allows the application deployer to make sure that the cluster operations don’t voluntarily evict too many pods simultaneously so as to cause data loss or service degradation.

Another promising feature is ‘Federation’ which essentially allows the user to pair an individual Kubernetes environment with another (or multiple) Kubernetes environment making them appear as a single pool of resources. This allows organizations to enable their data centers to make use of additional public cloud resources, also allowing them to explore environments beyond their data centers while having control and visibility over what those environments should look like.
 

Limitations of Kubernetes 1.5

 
Certain features including StatefulSet are still in beta, though development is progressing rapidly. The company also doesn’t want to trouble users by releasing upgrades every three months, and is currently figuring out a reliable upgrade process.

Creating, packaging and deploying a software are three stages that are critical to a release management lifecycle. Although there are a number of reliable containers enterprise developers can rely on for this purpose, one stands out from the rest for its “Build, Ship and Run” vision, ending up as one of the most popular open source technologies today – Docker.

With Docker, creating, deploying and running applications are considerably easier. This benefits developers and system administrators more, and is the main reason why it’s close to finding a place in a DevOps environment.

DevOps is something that covers the entire delivery pipeline.

According to Wikipedia:

DevOps is a culture, movement or practice that emphasizes the collaboration and communication of both software developers and other information-technology (IT) professionals while automating the process of software delivery and infrastructure changes.

Because of this, it’s obvious that it could have sets of multiple tools to fulfil its purpose. This article intends to explore how Docker fits in to a DevOps ecosystem, and how the ecosystem benefits from it.
 

DevOps teams can breathe easy

 
With the rapid growth of Docker into a reliable environment for software development, software companies, having acknowledged its potential, have started using Docker in DevOps environments more. The DevOps teams seem to be benefitting the most, as they can now efficiently configure both development and test environments thanks to Docker. This in turn results in successful release management.
 

Before the inception of Docker…

 
Back when Docker was just an idea, developers, testers and the operations team had to rely on complex tools for configuration management. The complex integrations and the issues that may arise out of it can further complicate things.

There are a lot of environments involved and they should all be aligned to make it work. That in itself takes a lot of work. But with Docker, the team just starts with a base image that stays the same in other environments from development to testing.
 

After the inception of Docker…

 
A lot happened. But let’s talk about where it fits in DevOps. Docker in DevOps is both a platform and a tool.

For developers, it’s a platform where they can run the applications.

For operations people, it’s a tool that facilitates integration with the workflow.

In the end, they will be able to work with and deploy the same code. Normally, after the developer is done with the development and testing, the operations people will be tasked with deploying it. And if in case an issue arises which didn’t during the development phase, the operations people will lose their sleep.

With Docker, there would be no friction when the ops team prepares to deploy the application after development and testing. It will be seamless.
 

Conclusion

 
Being open source has its perks. For Docker, it means you can have additional out-of-the-box features, and support from a big community. And unlike a virtual machine, there is no hypervisor in Docker, which is why it’s considered lightweight. This is also why launching a Docker container is very fast. Build, test, run and deploy on the go at an impressive pace.

For a DevOps ecosystem, Docker-based pipeline reduces the risks of software delivery, and at the same time cuts the cost. It ensures timely delivery, and a satisfied developers and operations staff.