Digging in on Docker
A look at Qlik's hybrid cloud architecture
My last blog on hybrid cloud architecture went into the details on microservices and containerization and might have left you wondering…what does this all actually look like? I’ll share some visuals we showcased at Qonnections, Qlik’s global customer conference, that add a little more context to the vision.
We heard a lot of questions at Qonnections about our hybrid vision – “I really won’t have to move my data? But my users can keep using the green, white and gray associative experience they love?” “Can I keep some data on premise for security purposes?” “I won’t need to have completely separate on prem and cloud deployments anymore?” The answer to all of these questions - yes. Here’s what we envision a future hybrid cloud deployment might look like:
Now let’s go behind the scenes. The video below illustrates containers in motion during a live hybrid cloud deployment and shows all the live machines, nodes and tasks operating in real-time across multiple environments concurrently. (For Docker experts, the illustration was built using Qlik Application Platform on Docker Swarm data). Each column represents a physical or virtual machine and each Qlik-engine task represents an instance of a specific service (or Docker container). Keep an eye on the moving Qlik-engine tasks:
The video shows a few different scenarios for Qlik-engine tasks:
- A new user opens a new app, and a new container is created and appears – the app is opened in a new container
- Another new user also wants to access an app that’s already open – that user gets routed to the same container (one app, multiple users)
- Multiple users are taking the same type of action on multiple apps, such as view-only or edit-only (multiple apps, one or multiple users)
- Users close out of the app and there are no longer any active sessions on a container, so that container becomes idle and is stopped (and disappears) after a certain grace period.
Here we’re demonstrating how our architecture supports a vision for a platform that seamlessly spans and elastically scales across infrastructure. Only microservices that are needed by particular users are spun up by at any particular time. Different users can access various services in different environments – all within one unified solution.
And, because microservices are smaller components of the overall platform, it’s easy to swap them out with improved versions. This means continuous release cycles that deliver faster innovation to you. We’ve already designed Qlik Sense Cloud this way, and have been able to roll out new connectors and multiple other new features continuously as a result (read more about our cloud-ready, cloud-first development strategy here).
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To learn more about this topic, join our webinar with partner Spiceworks: Cloud Analytics: The Essentials on Getting Started