Published: 03 June 2020
Summary
Enterprises are adopting Kubernetes for the promise of abstraction and a common control plane to make applications portable across hybrid and multicloud. I&O technical professionals can use this research to assess Kubernetes for application portability, and its risks and limitations.
Included in Full Research
- Determine Your Goals: What Are You Trying to Achieve?
- Application Portability Goals
- Consistency of Operations Goals
- How Kubernetes Helps With Application Portability
- Kubernetes Standardizes Application Definition and Deployment
- Kubernetes Standardizes the Operational Model
- Kubernetes Design Concepts That Support Portability
- Limitations, Constraints and Risks of Using Kubernetes for Application Portability
- Kubernetes Is Just an Alternative Point of Lock-In
- Containerizing Apps Is a Prerequisite
- The Cost of Ignoring Cloud Provider Native Services
- Kubernetes Still Requires Infrastructure Management
- Infrastructure Dependencies Are Inevitable
- Assessing Portability Characteristics of Different Kubernetes Consumption Models
- Self-Managed Open-Source DIY
- Public Cloud Managed CaaS
- Commercial PaaS or CaaS Distribution
- Strengths
- Weaknesses
- Choose Your Point of Lock-In Explicitly
- Accurately Measure the ROI of Engineering for Portability or Consistency
- Don’t Adopt Kubernetes Only for Application Portability Reasons
- Abstract the Kubernetes Cluster Management Control Plane From a Specific Implementation to a Federated Manager