I have a MEAN stack application which needs to be cloud hosted. The management needs it to be portable and that brought me to checkout cloud foundry. However, even for cloud foundry there are many provider options like CF on Azure, PCF , IBM Blue Mix and so on. However, I am not able to understand the differences between them. Can you please point me to something that helps me understand the differences between these various providers and make a decision? Also whats the difference between Azure PaaS and Azure Cloud Foundry?
Cloud Foundry is an open source PaaS and because it's open source, you have the freedom to either:
host it yourself on a variety of IaaS
use a public, multi-tenant Cloud Foundry service
have a provider host a private CF for you
This is very similar to hosting options for Kubernetes for example (even though it's worth mentioning that Cloud Foundry predates Kubernetes by a couple of years).
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry" is a commercial distribution of Cloud Foundry targeted at large enterprises. It has a couple of features not found in the open source version, mostly related to deployment automation and integration of application services like MySQL etc. Pivotal is also a main sponsor of development work on the open source version of Cloud Foundry. PCF on Azure is kind of a "template service" that allows you to quickly deploy a private PCF installation on Azure, so it's to some degree a combination of hosting options 1) and 3).
You specifically asked about the difference between various public Cloud Foundry service providers. Here's the most important points:
data center location and related privacy concerns (PWS runs on AWS US locations for example)
choice of managed application services and plans (e.g. MySQL, PostgreSQL etc.)
pricing for apps and application services
performance (available CPU per Diego Cell on which application containers execute, networking)
Cloud Foundry version and supported features like container-to-container networking or deployment of docker containers
quality and availability of support options, onboarding assistance
availability of legal assurances/contracts you may need, e.g. to comply with EU GDPR rules
Also worth reading: Cloud Foundry explained
Cloud Foundry is an OpenSource PaaS that can run on top of any different IaaS. So you can got to https://github.com/cloudfoundry/cf-deployment and use it to install your own instance of Cloud Foundry on Azure, AWS, GCP, vSphere, OpenStack, SoftLayer ... etc.
PCF is a commercial product from Pivotal based on the OpenSource Cloud Foundry. You buy it and then you install and run it on an IaaS of your choice.
BlueMix is a commercial product from IBM which is also based on OpenSource Cloud Foundry. It is also a set of services based on various IBM products so with BlueMix IBM runs and manages the cloud for you.
Azure PaaS is a set of service from Microsoft for deploying applications which only runs an Azure, while Cloud Foundry can be installed on Azure or other IaaS providers.
Related
How can I orchestrate and call cloud services from different providers: Google Cloud, AWS and Azure
We did check workflows, but it seems that workflows are limited in each provider's platform, so if I build a workflow in Azure, I can only include services from Azure, but not from Google Cloud or AWS.
Cloud Workflow is an orchestrator that call APIs. There is a better integration for Google Cloud services (and with Google Security) but you can also use other API, such as other Cloud Provider services API.
You can also use Cloud Composer, based on Apache Airflow, which has a large library of operator that help you to call different services on different platform. Because it's initially (and still) an open source project, it's portable and there is no Cloud Preference on that solution.
If you want an orchestration tool for multi Cloud usage, Airflow should be the best approach because it proposes many operators for each Cloud Provider.
It's open source, well documented, there are many supports and example in each Cloud Provider.
It's also the best tool if you want to be Cloud Agnostic and migrate it easily to any Cloud provider if needed.
If you host Airflow in Google Cloud, you can use a managed solution with Cloud Composer 2 (GKE autopilot).
Cloud Workflow is a good solution if you stay in the GCP world, it's serverless and based on API calls but it is less documented than Airflow for an usage outside of GCP. It's also not Cloud agnostic and strongly coupled to GCP.
I recommend you using Airflow for your need.
I hear Google's Anthos is supporting hybrid cloud, and has features for building applications that are cloud-agnostic.
Does Amazon-AWS support integration with Anthos AMP?
From enterprise standpoint, I prefer not to be locked with AWS, so would be great if AWS integrates with Anthos AMP.
Given that Google Anthos was just announced this month at Google Next '19, details will change over time.
I do not expect that AWS will directly support Google Anthos.
Google has stated that Google will provide a single managed service that supports Google Anthos. I translate the statements by Urs Hölzle (Google Sr VP) as: Google Anthos support will be provided as part of your Google Support agreement no matter where Google Anthos is running - GCP, Azure, AWS, or On-premises.
I am new to Hyperledger. I have defined my model for the network and successfully deployed it locally(over my system). Everything is working as expected. I want to replicate the same and make it public so that other team members can use it too.
How can I deploy the same over cloud hosting services like AWS or OpenStack?
I just want that the blockchain services should be available publicly.
IBM Cloud offers a way to do this if you have an IBM Cloud account.
If you do not have and do not want an account, then you could at least look at the scripts being used for deploying to Kubernetes.
IBM Cloud Sandbox
The scripts themselves can be downloaded/cloned with this command: git clone https://github.com/IBM-Blockchain/ibm-container-service
I'm trying to figure out, how the Cloud Foundry Certified Provider Program is tackling vendor lock-in. I've read that it enables Developers to migrate their apps to another certified provider without bigger problems. I'm not sure how this works since theres is nothing written in the requiremets about supported languages or services.
It seams to me, that this certification only guarantees easy porability for statelass apps which doesn't consume any other services.
Am I right with this assumption?
Cloud Foundry launches PaaS certification to combat vendor lock-in
As regards cloudfoundry platform
is there the possibility to implement a multi-tenant solution? The customer should be able to manage multi-tenancy from a dashboard or “provider console”
is there the possibility to grant permissions and create access roles on a per-user basis?
is there a control panel where the admin user will have direct access to main services (mysql, mongodb,redis, dea, etc)?
As regards application/web development
Is the code versioning (cvs, svn) implemented as module of cloudfoundry or delivered in the vfabric suite?
Is there the possibility to adopt a workflow to track all the phases of application development (design, development, integration and test, implementation, operation)?
Thanks
Here are your answers:
Cloud Foundry platform is a multi-tenant solution in that it allows for multiple users and each user's applications are shielded from others.
There are two types of roles for Cloud Foundry today:admin and user.
There isn't a UI web application tool as of today. You can access your apps deployed to cloud foundry by using the vmc CLI tool. Accessing services is possible using vmc tunnel. See http://docs.cloudfoundry.com/tools/vmc/caldecott.html
As regarding to web development:
No. However one can look at those as a service...
Workflow is usually tool or process based. There is no offer of an application development tracking tool in Cloud Foundry today.