Why You Need an Intelligent Data Platform?

There are many traditional frameworks available in the market which can be used for your big data. But, there are many technologies trending in the market which can do this work more efficiently. The key requirements of these big data applications are scalability, flexibility, and storage. These requirements play a major role in deciding the data platform for your company.

Most companies start with a big data project to understand their storage requirements. Also, you can find a suitable application for your business. You can test these data platforms with your application environment. Thus, you can select the data platform which will meet your application needs and which can provide data to your custom applications without any delay. You can also optimize your environment for flexibility or fast execution of your applications. But, first, you must find a storage solution for your company. This data platform must give access to large chunks of data. Thus, this data can be used by your applications for business purposes.

Basics of containerization

Kubernetes and Application containers are two new technologies in the market. You can use these applications to efficiently develop your business applications. Both applications are designed to work with the cloud. Thus, you can easily integrate them with your cloud environment.

First, let’s try to understand the application container. An application container is an all-in-one package or installer which is required to run a particular application in your system. It is hardware-independent and can be used on any system. The binary file is also included in this container. Also, it contains the hardware specifications, and the software required to perform a particular operation.

After installing this application container, you don’t need to install anything else in your system to run the application. The application container contains all the important components which are required to run the application. Thus, the application will run the same in all the platforms. It doesn’t matter if your application is installed in your laptop, computer, cloud, server, virtual machine or any other system. Also, it is very easy to move this container from one system to other systems. You can also directly upload this application container in a software hub. Thus, it can be accessed by anyone in your company.

Comparison of containers and virtual machines

Virtual machines and containers are very similar to each other. But, still, there are some differences between them. A container is actually an installer or package which contains all the important files to run an application. It can run on any system, as long as that system is compatible with the container. Also, it can run on any operating system and doesn’t depend on the hardware. All you need is this container to run the application in your system.

But, Virtual Machine is a virtual copy of an operating system. It depends on your hardware and operating system. Also, there is no direct communication between your host system and the virtual machine. There is a hypervisor layer between them which is responsible for the communication. A virtual machine is capable of performing many complex tasks like running a different operating system on top of your host system. But, the size of these Virtual machines is very big. Thus, it will take a lot of time to install them in your system. Also, it will use more resources when compared with an application container.

In simple words, application software is a very fast and efficient package that can be installed in any system. The execution speed is also very fast because it uses the operating system of your host computer. Also, it will use very fewer resources when compared with a virtual machine. It can be easily transferred from one environment or system to another environment.

There can be more than one application in the application containers. But, this is not recommended because this will increase the execution time of these applications. Thus, every application should have its own separate application container.

Scalability and portability of containers   

A container contains only one specific application, thus it takes very little storage space on your server. You can run multiple application containers on your server at the same time. Also, you can distribute the workload more efficiently and increase the speed of your work. These application containers will also increase the uptime of your applications. If one application container fails, then the remaining application containers will take care of the work. Thus, you can provide 100% uptime to your clients.

Thanks to their containers small size, you can easily move these containers from one server to another server. An application container already contains all the required components which are required to run an application. Thus, it is very easy to move these containers. All you need to do is copy these containers in the new location. After that, just run them on those servers. You don’t need to check for hardware compatibilities or install any additional software.

Containers are neither persistent nor condition-based and do not know where their data comes from

There is a drawback of using these containers. If a container crashes, then all the data in the application will be lost. You can store the results of the applications in some other location. But, all the log files and progress files will get lost. Because whenever you will start the container it will revert back to its original state.

Containers also don’t know the location or source of the data. They don’t know where the data is stored after processing. Thus, these containers can’t access any data sources in your server. You can provide data from some external sources and save your results in some other place. But, the container won’t know how the data is getting stored. Thus, these containers are not “data ware”. Because of this, these containers can’t provide you paths or locations of your data. Also, these containers don’t know which application and hardware are available on the server. This is actually useful because this protects the containers. But, your container won’t be able to use any common services for distributing the workload between different resources.

Container orchestration

Another common comparison between virtual machines and containers is that the scaling, monitoring, provisioning, and updating of the individual must be as efficient as possible. Also, these features must be partially automated for fast processing. Most of the companies and developers rely on Kubernetes. Kubernetes is a very simple platform that provides balanced orchestration for application containers. It will automatically create, migrate and delete the containers. Also, it will make the scaling process much easier for you.

However, there are some limitations to Kubernetes. Even Kubernetes can’t make these application containers condition-based. The only possible solution is by using other data platforms that can overcome the drawbacks of the application container technology. Thanks to these technologies, you can save the state of a container at failure and start your container from the same point.

There are many benefits of using stateful containers. Stateful containers can be easily recovered after some failure or shutdown. Also, they will store all the log data in their database. Thus, you don’t need to execute a complex process multiple numbers of times.

The data fabric is separated from these application containers. Thus, developers don’t need to worry about storage infrastructure. All they need to do is configure these application containers with the storage infrastructure or platform. This platform is capable enough of managing the whole lifecycle of the data. Also, it can manage all types of data; it doesn’t matter if they are coming from a messaging service, a database, your cloud storage, or from local storage.

Thus, setting up your cloud with containers and Kubernetes will make your life much easier. You don’t have to worry about the issues which occur while managing an application container. It will also develop and deploy client applications much faster. This will definitely boost your development process and make it more flexible and efficient.

Contact us today to learn about Bleuwire™  services and solutions in how we can help your business.