How a China-Based Bare Metal Service Provider Tackled Kubernetes Load Balancing
KubeCon + CloudNativeCon sponsored this post.
How A China-Based Bare Metal Provider Solved a Problem with Open Source
Kubernetes continues to spread across the cloud and to on-premises and bare metal server environments — and with the wider scale adoption often comes growing pains. Specific to bare metal, for example, Kubernetes platforms lack viable load balancing capabilities. Beijing Yunify Technology, a China-based bare metal service provider, says it has solved the issue, with the development of open source Porter designed to solve the issue of load balancing on bare metal in production on Kubernetes,
During this The New Stack Makers podcast recorded live at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Open Source Summit China 2019 in Shanghai, Xuetao Song, senior software engineer at Beijing Yunify Technology, described in more detail about how Porter offers load balancing capabilities for Kubernetes, while also touching on other container-related themes.
During the podcast, host Alex Williams, founder and editor in chief of The New Stack, provided context about where Porter fits into bare metal infrastructures. The main issue, he said, with open source load balancing on bare metal is how backend workloads are typically exposed using the load balancer in a Kubernetes cluster. Typically, the cloud provider offer the requisite load balancing plugin, but when organizations deploy applications and data on bare metal servers on Kubernetes in their own environments, the Kubernetes clusters lack load balancing, which is where Porter serves its purpose.
Song described how Beijing Yunify Technology uses Porter to connect it with its bare metal servers and with its cloud platform. With a border gateway protocol (BGP), “complicated metalwork” can be connected, with Porter helping to bridge the gap between Kubernetes and bare metal servers. Also, while load balancing is Porter’s key features, Porter also offers route dynamic configuration and IP access management capabilities.
Beijing Yunify Technology’s creation of Porter was also part of its growing realization of the importance of containers — and how the container, as well as Kubernetes, play a part in what the company offers its customers. Song described how his organization has been offering services for computing and database and that container infrastructures have played a key role. “This year, we paid [a great amount of] attention to containers,” Song said.
Song also said Puppet and bare metal have been popular among Beijing Yunify Technology’s customers. Containers are an [irreversible] trend.” In addition to security features, “bare metal is fast,” Song said.
Beijing Yunify Technology’s customers have also been adopting Kubernetes, Song said. Among other things, “Kubernetes is just more flexible than virtual machines,” Song said.
In this Edition:
2:28: What is Porter? Why did you develop it?
5:53: So you said there are three aspects to Porter, that was number one, what is number two?
11:44: Why did you decide to take this approach? What problems were you having before you started using Porter?
14:31: Tell me about your company, what does your company provide?
15:48: And so you now offer Porter to these customers — Are they adopting Kubernetes? Why?
17:36: What are you learning through your customers about Porter and Kubernetes? What are the challenges they face?
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation is a sponsor of The New Stack.
Feature image via Pixabay.
