Software Development based on a distributed architecture provides both several advantages and new challenges. In order to take advantage of the distribution it requires implementation of service discovery, routing, load-balancing, resilience mechanisms and more. These requirements can be covered by language frameworks or the underlying platform.

This talk will walk through a comparison of various approaches with focus on frameworks, Kubernetes and extending options like Service Meshes and eBPF. The talk will be lecture style with demo.

Target Audience: Developers, Architects, DevOps
Prerequisites: Introductory style, basic IT and dev skills probably helpful, but not required
Level: Basic

Extended Abstract:
Software Development based on a cloud-native (or distributed) architecture provides both several advantages and new challenges. In order to take advantage of the distribution it requires implementation of service discovery, routing, load-balancing, resilience mechanisms and more. Initially software frameworks provided dedicated implementations for API Gateways, Service Registries, Circuit Breakers and many more. These functionalities are declared as code dependencies and need to be set at build time.

With Kubernetes there are alternative options to address these requirements. Kubernetes provides concepts for service discovery, load-balancing and resilience. So-called service meshes extend this functionality with more granular network interaction. They are not part of the application code and can hence be added during runtime. A fairly new approach is emerging with the eBPF technology, which claims to enable service meshes with minimal overhead.

With this talk Matthias wants to explain "the why" of cloud-native application design and how various cloud-native technologies facilitate this. It shows the possibilities and limitations of technologies and which forms of integration can make sense. The talk mostly consists of graphical visualisations/explanations and contains a live demo.