Articles : DevOps

Kubernetes is a popular tool for container orchestration. But why are so many companies choosing to use Kubernetes, and what benefit does it offer software development and DevOps teams?

The most significant difference in software development today compared to the past is the rate of deployments: development teams release software to production earlier and more frequently. Customers want more, and they want it now. However, they are quick to leave you for the competition when things go wrong. According to research, 32% of all customers would desert a company they liked after one bad experience.

There are many reasons why an organization would want to adopt a multi-cloud strategy. With the potential for cost savings, better scalability, improved redundancy, and access to a wider set of features, it's no surprise that so many companies are exploring using multiple cloud vendors as an option. However, going multi-cloud is more than just getting your applications run across different cloud service providers  – one of the biggest challenges teams face is supporting multi-cloud applications in production. 

When it comes to current industry development trends, DevOps and DevSecOps are two of the big buzzwords that many organizations focus on. It shouldn’t be difficult to understand why, as both approaches to development allow teams to better understand what goes on with their software in production and bring them more in tune with the end user, leading to better software—at least in theory.

The problem with industry buzzwords like "DevOps" is that companies feel they need to attach themselves to them in order to remain relevant and retain talent. While wanting to be on the cutting edge of technology is admirable for any company, too often it leads down a path of adopting concepts they don’t fully understand and aren’t prepared for. 

The cloud was one of the biggest game-changers in the software development world. It has drastically changed the way that we develop software for a global audience. However, moving to the cloud is far more than just migrating your software systems. It requires a change in the way you think about software design and development, and before you can make this move, you need to understand what it means to design software with a cloud-native mindset.

In an upcoming series of blog articles we analyse the lessons to be learned from COVID-19 and how to design for uncertainty. This series tackles 5 main topics which are introduced below. To follow the series “Designing for Uncertainty” please subscribe to our blog.

Developers building business-critical applications need an IT environment that allows them to work quickly and securely. This means having reliable web servers that are always available and protected. However, in the agile world of modern application development, they can’t always wait for the IT team to set up and configure load balancers and ADCs for them. They need their own solutions, and they need them to be tailored to their own needs. When we developed Snapt Nova, we were our first customer. Our development team uses Nova themselves (the process known as "dogfooding") to provide load balancing for Nova development and deployment. This post is about what developers need, how the right load balancer or application delivery controller (ADC) can support and empower developers, and why Nova might be the best load balancer for developers – or, at least, why our own developers seem to think it is.

The load balancer market is evolving from feature-heavy hardware appliances to lightweight software solutions and flexible cloud-native implementations. But if you’re evaluating load balancer options, how do you bridge the gap between old world systems and the new? Do you prioritize the product features you’ve come to rely on or the advantages of flexibility? What are the pros and cons?