Containers as a service (CaaS) is an abstraction methodology where businesses leave the technical side of container deployment and orchestration to a provider. DevOps benefits from CaaS to more easily automate deployment of software. Using containers is a development standard for rapidly changing applications, CaaS platforms improve performance, scalability, and flexibility of software deployments.
What Is CaaS?
Instead of hosting your own infrastructure, CaaS providers host the hardware and offer an API where automation developers and DevOps communicate with the platform. A CaaS removes much of the overhead of creating containers, maintaining and scaling them, and configuring the orchestration software (e.g., Kubernetes) to work with deployments.
CaaS often gets confused with platform as a service (PaaS). Both CaaS and PaaS are platforms that handle the technical aspects of productivity and software development, but CaaS is specific to containers. Some developers still use monolithic codebase patterns, but CaaS can reduce the learning curve if they decide to switch to containers. PaaS is not container-specific, and it can be a form of service for end users unrelated to development.
How Does CaaS in Cloud Computing Work?
A container hosts a modular piece of software that performs an action. Instead of having one large codebase that must be compiled and deployed, a container lets you separate the codebase into packages and run them independently from one another. They then communicate with each other using the container’s API.
A CaaS hosts the infrastructure necessary to deploy and run containers. As with any other technology, containers need a system to operate. The CaaS provider manages the hardware and operating systems for containers to function. Developers use the provider’s API to automate deployments without deploying resources to host containers. The orchestration software used to manage containers is also hosted by the CaaS provider.
Enterprise businesses with several applications and developers often use CaaS to automate deployments and reduce infrastructure overhead. The CaaS host has scaling services, so businesses don’t need to worry about resource exhaustion. Deployments can be instantaneous from development to staging and production environments.
Advantages of CaaS in Cloud Computing
Because the CaaS provider manages container infrastructure, businesses no longer need to worry about scalability. Scale is handled on the backend, and businesses only pay for the resources they use rather than paying for an entire buildout, including servers and network hardware. Testing infrastructure is also eliminated, but developers still need to test their software for any bugs.
Deployments are simplified after infrastructure is scaled. Scalability can be done automatically, or administrators can manually add resources to the environment. Testing infrastructure might be necessary if businesses use a multi-tenant setup. Multiple providers have their own settings, security configurations, and proprietary software. If using a multi-tenant setup where one acts as failover, test your failover procedures to make sure that you can switch over in case of an emergency.
Potential Downsides or Disadvantages of Container as a Service
While CaaS offers the advantages of flexibility, convenience of deployments, and scalability, it has a few downsides. Most businesses write DevOps scripts specifically for the CaaS platform, so any changes mean refactoring code. Once you choose a platform, it’s difficult to move to another one without requiring several hours of refactoring and testing.
Costs can be high for enterprise businesses with several applications and high-volume traffic. A CaaS will scale resources as needed, but additional resources cost money. Businesses should ensure that the CaaS fits into the development budget. For a multi-tenant solution, costs could be different based on the providers that you choose.
What Can CaaS in Cloud Computing Be Used For?
Developers often break down software into microservices, which can be deployed independently. A CaaS helps with microservices by giving DevOps teams a way to deploy containerized components in the cloud. The provider hosts the infrastructure that will load balance applications, and DevOps can schedule deployments using the provider’s interface.
DevOps can use CaaS for CI/CD or cloud-native deployments. CaaS is not a requirement to work with containerized development or microservices, but it can reduce the overhead of managing hardware. If your business already uses cloud deployments, a CaaS provider can make scheduling and automation more efficient.
Conclusion
To make DevOps more efficient and work with containerized automation, a CaaS integration speeds up deployment by hosting the infrastructure and scalable resources necessary for growing applications and development teams. A good CaaS provider offers a platform that works with orchestration such as Kubernetes so that developers already working with load-balanced containerized environments are familiar with DevOps scripts for deployment.
Pure Storage offers services for microservice hosting and container scheduling and deployment. Our Kubernetes platform offers better performance for DevOps scheduling. Our solutions support container storage as a service for hybrid clouds.
