Patterns in Containerizing Workloads

I presented this talk at StackWorld 2016 in SanFrancisco about Migrating Workloads to Containers. I try to answer the following questions in this talk:
- Are containers just a new hype for companies to spend money on?
- How do we decide which applications to migrate to containers?
- Moving to containers mean rewriting existing apps. That is a very costly upfront.

Transcript

1. CONTAINERIZATION: MIGRATING EXISTING WORKLOADS Stackworld 2016 Zohaib Khan (@zeebluejay) Practice Lead and Manager PaaS Community of Practice at Red Hat June 2016
2. CONTAINERIZING: MIGRATING EXISTING WORKLOADS 2 CONTAINER JOURNEY
3. CONTAINERIZING: MIGRATING EXISTING WORKLOADS 3 LIFT AND SHIFT • Containerize existing components • Deploy them on a PaaS • Keep external integrations and data on legacy • Legacy applications have to be well written and suited AUGMENT WITH NEW LAYERS COMPLETE REWRITE PATTERNS IN MIGRATING WORKLOADS 3 MAIN PATTERNS • Legacy remains intact • New layer enables new capabilities • Deploy on PaaS • New integration points between legacy and new layers • Legacy is totally replaced • New interfaces and data • Use PaaS to run • Some data and features can be re-wrapped, but mostly are retired.
4. CONTAINERIZING: MIGRATING EXISTING WORKLOADS 4
5. CONTAINERIZING: MIGRATING EXISTING WORKLOADS 5
6. CONTAINERIZING: MIGRATING EXISTING WORKLOADS 6
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8. CONTAINERIZING: MIGRATING EXISTING WORKLOADS 8
9. CONTAINERIZING: MIGRATING EXISTING WORKLOADS 9 PATTERNS IN MIGRATING WORKLOADS Cost of Migration Time Lift and Shift Complete ReWrite Augment with New Layers Generally the most expensive and longest
10. REAL LIFE EXAMPLES
11. CONTAINERIZING: MIGRATING EXISTING WORKLOADS #1: Large Scale Web Application 11 SOLUTION PROBLEM • Content Management + ECommerce needed at large scale • VM based servers did not scale under load • Multi-server states hard to synchronize • Development environment difficult to replicate • Containerized tiered components • Small containers deployed at scale • OpenShift PaaS to manage and orchestrate containers • Development & Prod have zero drift THE RESULT • Handled Black Friday loads at scale: ~2500+ concurrent sessions without breaking a sweat • Quickly scale up and down. Burstable. • Interchangeable front-end containers = automated sites with custom DNS and HTTPS • Developers have taken ownership of deployment, can update, roll-back, clone w/o sysadmins
12. CONTAINERIZING: MIGRATING EXISTING WORKLOADS #2: Legacy Middleware with Huge Data 12 SOLUTION PROBLEM • Data and functionality were close coupled • User session = DB connection • Database choked during the day • Hard to add new features • New microservices layer as only entry point • Data caching to avoid expensive hits to DB • Containerized microservices talk to legacy • Messaging backbone THE RESULT • From < 50 concurrent requests to > 5000 concurrent requests. • Exposed data and functionality to Mobile, Salesforce and partner channels. • No big bang rewrite upfront. Retiring legacy incrementally. • Enabled DevOps
13. CONSIDERATION FOR WORKLOAD CONVERSION
14. CONTAINERIZING: MIGRATING EXISTING WORKLOADS 14 CONTAINER SECURITY IN CI & CD EARLY
15. THE TENANCY SCALE
16. CONTAINERIZING: MIGRATING EXISTING WORKLOADS 16 APPLICATION CONTAINERS • Code: mysqld • Configuration: /etc/my.cnf • Data: /var/lib/mysql • Other stuff :-)
17. CONTAINERIZING: MIGRATING EXISTING WORKLOADS 17 LEVEL OF EFFORT Easy Moderate Difficult Code Completely Isolated (single process) Somewhat Isolated (multiple processes) Self Modifying (e.g. Actor Model) Configuration One Configuration File Several Configuration Files Configuration Anywhere in Filesystem Data Data Saved in Single Place Data Saved in Several Places Data Anywhere in Filesystem Secrets Static Files Network Dynamic Generation of Certificates Network HTTP, HTTPS TCP, UDP IPSEC, Highly Isolated Installation Packages, Source Packages and Understood Configuration Installers (install.sh) Licensing Open Source Proprietary Restrictive & Proprietary
18. THANK YOU linkedin.com/in/zoaib twitter.com/zeebluejay stackinnovator.com