My top 3 CNCF projects in DevOps
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation(CNCF) is a non-profit organization that aims to promote the adoption of cloud-native computing…
First published on Medium
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation(CNCF) is a non-profit organization that aims to promote the adoption of cloud-native computing practices and technologies. Their projects provide a huge value in the cloud industry, especially in DevOps, they have become indispensable.
As they have tons of graduated or incubating open-source projects, not all of them may be useful in your solution. Therefore, I will be specifically talking about my top 3 CNCF projects from my DevOps experiences.
Kubernetes
To start with, it must be Kubernetes.
Kubernetes is a system for automating deployment, scaling, and managing containerized applications that graduated from CNCF in 2018. It has been populated even before its graduation, because of its flexible and robust infrastructure.
It may take time to set up a Kubernetes cluster from scratch, but once you have completed it, all the operations will be standardized and running smoothly. Moreover, due to its popularity, the major cloud providers in the market like AWS, Azure, and GCP, have provided their managed solution of Kubernetes, which saves you from headaches to set up.
As a DevOps Engineer, I would say Kubernetes is my favourite tool. And I definitely recommend you learn it for your personal development or in your future DevOps solutions.
Helm
The second one I would like to share is Helm, which is a Kubernetes package manager that graduated from CNCF in 2020.
Helm is a tool to manage Kubernetes applications. You can use it to define, install, and upgrade with Helm Chart. A Chart is a set of files that includes all the YAML configuration files based on parametrized values. You can apply to different environments with corresponding sets of values by reusing the Chart. Additionally, Helm makes it easier to maintain multiple versions with multiple configurations.
I believe running applications on Kubernetes will only be more popular. The importance of Helm will also be increasing. Start today to package your application using Helm.
Argo
I have to give the last one to Argo, as it is one of my favourite homelabbing tool.
Argo is built for Kubernetes to run workflows, manage clusters, and do GitOps. It includes four tools, such as Argo Workflows, ArgoCD, Argo Rollouts, and Argo Events. You can easily understand what they are made for from their name.
I would like to bring up Argo Workflows and ArgoCD as they are the most popular Argo tools.
For Argo Workflows, you can build workflows to run complex and repeat jobs, such as building Docker images, performing unit tests, etc. Those tasks can be done in parallel or order as a streamlined process.
For ArgoCD, it is a declarative GitOps CD tool for Kubernetes. You can write definitions or use Helm Charts to deploy your application, then its future deployment or lifecycle management will be automated. My favourite thing is that it can track the version of some public Helm Charts and automate the upgrade for me.
Conclusion
These are my top 3 CNCF projects in DevOps. Even though they are Kubernetes or Kubernetes-oriented, I believe they are playing an important role in the DevOps industry. If you are using it already, keep it up, otherwise start to learn them today.