On Wednesday, Microsoft and Alibaba Cloud revealed "an open standard for developing and operating applications on Kubernetes and other platforms," that isn't yet a standard and looks rather redundant in light of similar projects.
The Open Application Model (OAM), released as an open source project under the oversight of the Open Web Foundation, defines how to describe applications in a way that separates the concerns of developers – how the application is made – and operators – how the application is deployed.
For example, a developer implementing file storage might specify that data will get written to a file path but wouldn't need to be describe what the kind of storage volume that gets mounted or how that requirement gets fulfilled.
"Separating the application definition from the operational details of the cluster enables application developers to focus on the key elements of their application rather than the operational details of where it deploys," Microsoft explains in a blog post, noting that this separation of concerns allows code to be more modular, reusable, and reliable.
The OAM model covers components (discrete, runnable, described units), workload types (that a component can execute), traits (defining operations-specific features like auto-scaling), application scopes (boundaries representing groups of components), and an application configuration (describing component instances, traits, and scopes, in conjunction with configuration data).
Microsoft has also created an implementation of its specification, a project called Rudr, which sounds like it ought to be ride sharing app for boats but really is just a name chosen for its thematic association with Kubernetes (Greek for a ship's captain or pilot).
(Score: 5, Interesting) by progo on Monday October 21 2019, @06:06PM (1 child)
I looked at the summary this morning, and skimmed the first linked article. I came back a few hours later and there are almost no comments. I can't figure out what this is about.
My best guess is: Microsoft invented another layer to add on top of containers to create more problems than it solves.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Tuesday October 22 2019, @06:17AM
MS has always worked hard at being rud[e]r to their supposed customers...