Book Review: Cloud Native Infrastructure with Azure

Is the cloud the panacea for the problems with on-premises IT infrastructure? This question automatically arises when thinking about migrating to the cloud. If you pick up the book “Cloud Native Infrastructure with Azure” by Nishant Singh and Michael Kehoe, you will find answers to exactly this question. The authors highlight the advantages and disadvantages of cloud-native infrastructure and show how migration can be implemented. They are based on the definitions and guidelines of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

Rocky road to the cloud

As a rule, monolithic applications cannot be transferred 1:1 to the cloud (known as the lift-and-shift method). The containerization of the application in order to run it as a microservice also poses numerous challenges. The O’Reilly book therefore initially helps to get to know the Microsoft Azure Cloud in order to be able to develop your own infrastructure on this platform. Numerous code examples facilitate understanding. Each chapter closes with a short summary.

Detailed code samples

To begin with, the authors explain the idea of ​​cloud-native infrastructure and thus lay a foundation on which further topics are built. They present examples of deploying Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) and explain the capabilities of container orchestration with Kubernetes, the de facto standard for cloud-native environments. Singh and Kehoe describe how to set up a Kubernetes cluster from the ground up. They also deal in detail with the operation of a cloud-native infrastructure. Important supplementary topics such as monitoring, network and policy management, persistent storage systems and distributed databases are also not neglected. In the concluding chapters, the authors deal with messaging and streaming platforms and provide a brief introduction to the topic of serverless computing.

Clear and comprehensible introduction for cloud climbers

The book is not tailored for absolute beginners, but assumes basic knowledge of the cloud. However, the authors try to convey the necessary know-how to develop your own infrastructure on Microsoft Azure. If you have already gained initial experience in the cloud, the book should also provide valuable help for the further steps.

But even without prior knowledge, “Cloud Native Infrastructure with Azure” is recommended as a basis for all those who want to better understand the hype surrounding the cloud and the promises of cloud-native technology. For example, the work gives data scientists and data engineers a look under the cloud hood to familiarize themselves with the underlying functionality of cloud-native infrastructure – even if more specialized data tools such as Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse and Azure Machine Learning are not dealt with in this book.

Vladimir Poliakov
is a Big Data Engineer in the Data Analytics Center of TeamBank AG. Previously, he was responsible for setting up and maintaining the high-availability Oracle databases. As part of previous activities, he was able to gain DevOps experience in the DWH/Big Data team at ING Bank.

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