《Cloud Native Infrastructure》Introduction

书名：

Cloud Native Infrastructure -- Patterns for Scalable Infrastructure and Applications in a Dynamic Environment
云原生基础设施 -- 动态环境可扩展基础设施与应用程序模式

Introduction

Technology infrastructure is at a fascinating（迷人的） point in its history. Due to requirements for operating（经营） at tremendous（极大的） scale（规模）, it has gone through rapid disruptive change（颠覆性的改变）. The pace（步伐） of innovation（变革） in infrastructure has been unrivaled（无与伦比的） except for the early days of computing and the internet. These innovations make infrastructure faster, more reliable（可靠的）, and more valuable（有价值的）.
The people and companies who have pushed the boundaries（边界） of infrastructure to its limits have found ways of automating and abstracting it to extract more business value. By offering a flexible（灵活的）, consumable（可消耗的） resource, they have turned what was once an expensive cost center into a required business utility.
However, it is rare（罕见的） for utilities（基础组建） to provide financial value（财政价值） to the business, which means infrastructure is often ignored and seen as an unwanted cost. This leaves it with little time and money to invest（投资） in innovations or improvements（提升）.
How can such an essential（完全有必要的） and fascinating part of the business stack（业务栈） be so easily ignored? The business obviously（明显地） pays attention when infrastructure breaks, so why is it so hard to improve?
Infrastructure has reached a maturity（成熟的） level that has made it boring to consumers. However, its potential（潜在的） and new challenges have ignited a passion（点燃了激情） in implementors and engineers.
Scaling infrastructure and enabling new ways of doing business have aligned（使一致） engineers from all different industries（行业） to find solutions. The power of open source software (OSS) and communities（团体） driven to help each other have caused an explosion of new concepts and innovations.
If managed correctly, challenges with infrastructure and applications today will not be the same tomorrow. This allows infrastructure builders and maintainers（维护者） to make progress and take on（承担） new, meaningful work.Some companies have surmounted（克服） challenges such as scalability（可拓展性的）, reliability, and flexibility（灵活的）. They have created projects that encapsulate patterns（封装的模式） others can follow. The patterns are sometimes easily discovered（发现） by the implementor, but in other cases they are less obvious（察觉的）.
In this book we will share lessons from companies at the forefront（最前列的） of cloud native technologies to allow you to conquer（克服） the problem of reliably running scalable（可拓展的） applications. Modern business moves very fast. The patterns in this book will enable your infrastructure to keep up with the speed and agility（敏捷性） demands（需求） of your business. More importantly, we will empower you to make your own decisions about when you need to employ these patterns.
Many of these patterns have been exemplified（例证） in open source projects. Some of those projects are maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). The projects and foundation（基金会） are not the sole embodiment(唯一的体现) of the patterns, but it would be remiss（懈怠的） of you to ignore them. Look to them as examples, but do your own due diligence（尽职调查） to vet every solution you employ.
We will show you the benefits of cloud native infrastructure and the fundamental patterns that make scalable systems and applications. We’ll show you how to test your infrastructure and how to create flexible infrastructure that can adapt to your needs. You’ll learn what is important and how to know what’s coming.
May this book inspire（激起） you to keep moving forward to more exciting opportunities（机会）, and to share freely what you have learned with your communities.

Who Should Read This Book

If you’re an engineer developing infrastructure or infrastructure management tools, this book is for you. It will help you understand the patterns, processes, and practices to create infrastructure intended to（想要） be run in a cloud environment. By learning how things should be, you can better understand the application’s role and when you should build infrastructure or consume cloud services（使用云服务）.
Application engineers can also discover which services should be a part of their applications and which should be provided from the infrastructure. Through this book they will also discover the responsibilities（责任） they share with the engineers writing applications to manage the infrastructure.
Systems administrators who are looking to level up（提升） their skills and take a more prominent（重要的） role in designing infrastructure and maintaining infrastructure in a cloud native way can also learn from this book.
Do you run all of your infrastructure in a public cloud? This book will help you know when to consume cloud services and when to build your own abstractions（抽象化->组件） or services.
Run a data center or on-premises cloud? We will outline（概述） what modern applications expect from（对...的期望） infrastructure and will help you understand the necessary services to utilize（利用） your current investments（投资）.
This book is not a how-to and, outside of（除了） giving implementation examples, we’re not prescribing（给出） a specific product. It is probably too technical for managers, directors（董事）, and executives（高管） but could be helpful, depending on the involvement（参与程度） and technical expertise（技术专长） of the person in that role.
Most of all, please read this book if you want to learn how infrastructure impacts（影响） business, and how you can create infrastructure proven to（证明） work for businesses operating at a global internet scale. Even if you don’t have applications that require scaling to that size, you will still be better able to provide value if your infrastructure is built with the patterns described here, with flexibility and operability(可操作性) in mind（考虑到）.

Why We Wrote This Book

We want to help you by focusing on patterns and practices rather than（而不是） specific（特定的） products and vendors（供应商）. Too many solutions exist without an understanding of what problems they address（针对）.
We believe in the benefits of managing cloud native infrastructure via cloud native applications, and we want to prescribe（嘱咐、规定） the ideology（思想） to anyone getting started.
We want to give back to（回馈） the community and drive the industry（产业） forward. The best way we’ve found to do that is to explain the relationship between business and infrastructure, shed light on（阐明） the problems, and explain the solutions implemented by the engineers and organizations who discovered them.
Explaining patterns in a product-agnostic way is not always easy, but it’s important to understand why the products exist. We frequently use products as examples of pat‐ terns, but only when they will aid you in providing implementation examples of the solutions.
We would not be here without the countless(无数的) hours people have volunteered（自愿） to write code, help others, and invest in（投资） communities. We love and are thankful for the people that have helped us in our journey to understand these patterns, and we hope to give back and help the next generation of engineers. This book is our way of saying thank you.

Navigating This Book

1. Chapter 1 explains what cloud native infrastructure is and how we got where we are.
2. Chapter 2 can help you decide if and when you should adopt the patterns prescribed in later chapters.
3. Chapters 3 and 4 show how infrastructure should be deployed and how to write applications to manage it.
4. Chapter 5 teaches you how to design reliable infrastructure from the start with testing.
5. Chapters 6 and 7 show what managing infrastructure and applications looks like.
6. Chapter 8 wraps up and gives some insight（见解） into what’s ahead（未来）.

If you’re like us, you don’t read books from front to back. Here are a few suggestions on broader book themes:

1. If you are an engineer focused on creating and maintaining infrastructure, you should probably read Chapters 3 through 6 at a minimum.
2. Application developers can focus on Chapters 4, 5, and 7, about developing infrastructure tooling as cloud native applications.
3. Anyone not building cloud native infrastructure will most benefit from Chapters 1, 2, and 8.