Cloud computing has undoubtedly changed the scenario of the IT industry. There has been an incredible change in IT works now due to the upcoming technologies in the cloud computing field. The evolution continued with the arrival of an open-source cloud platform or the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). Now, there is a new development in another level of cloud computing architecture, i.e., Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). This open-source cloud platform is the next part of this evolution of IT. Cloud Foundry is a popular development in this arena.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service or IaaS is the cloud computing part that provides a base infrastructure for the end-user to create a platform and deploy applications after some configurations are needed. The open IaaS have helped the growth and use of cloud at an incredible level everywhere.

Basics of Cloud Foundry

Cloud Foundry is a multi-cloud platform accepted as an industry standard. This open-source cloud platform comes as a standalone package. It was developed initially in-house by VMware. Now Pivotal Software, a joint venture of VMware, General Electric, and EMC, owns Cloud Foundry.

This software package is not tied to specific cloud providers, and you can deploy it on an IaaS such as VMware’s vSphere, Amazon’s AWS, etc. Since it is an open platform, you can efficiently run your applications by deploying them on your own infrastructure. This is the game-changing open-source Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) technology.

This cloud computing architecture is different from other cloud platforms in many respects. It is a known fact that Cloud platforms could have a limit on the language and frameworks supported. There could be only some services provided for your apps or deployments. However, this particular open platform removes all these issues. Additionally, it allows the developers to deploy their apps without any modifications and specialized tools.

Read more on multi cloud computing Is Multi-cloud the future in Cloud Computing?What are the challenges?

The Components of Cloud Foundry

Here is a pictorial representation of the Cloud Foundry components

How does Cloud Foundry work?

Cloud Foundry has its subsystems that perform unique functions. These help in scale the apps and serve them online in a flexible way.

This platform contains Clouds that balance their loads over different machines while processing. Besides, this helps in optimizing the work in an efficient and fault-tolerant manner. Also, it has the Cloud Controller that runs the apps on the cloud’s Virtual Machines and manages lifecycles for the apps. There is a router working with the load balancer to route the incoming traffic to the VMS.

Cloud Foundry has designated two Virtual Machines: host VMs for hosting apps and component VMs for the platform infrastructure. Load of the hosted app is distributed over host VMs as per the demand changes. The host VMs can run duplicate app instances.

Cloud Foundry organizes and manages the user accounts through its User Authentication and Authorization(UAA) servers. UAA, along with other layers of Cloud Controller, works for granting the privileges to different roles. The components of this open cloud platform components share messages internally and continuously communicate with each other.

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

The open-source Cloud Foundry platform provides a basis for the Pivotal Cloud Foundry platform. Pivotal Application Service (PAS) is nothing but the Pivotal distribution of Cloud Foundry software. Pivotal cloud services offer commercial features and services that help you in hosting the applications better. Besides, pivotal cloud services include support services, docs, enterprise services, docs, and additional features.

Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) is the solution used by companies for multiple purposes like delivering the features faster, security, and operator efficiency. The developers become more productive, and the deployments take place without downtime. PCF protects the systems, and there is a higher availability.

PCF generates two types of logs– system logs and app logs. System logs from the PCF components and app logs from different hosted apps help monitor the CF deployments. Components and host Virtual Machines generate structured and usable logs. Hence one can perform complete monitoring and analysis easily.

Benefits of Cloud Foundry services in Cloud Computing

Being an open platform, CF provides support to many languages and frameworks like PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, etc. The platform supports many IaaS providers. Hence the most significant benefit is the flexibility and control provided to the developer. There is a quicker deployment of this innovation. It enjoys multi-vendor support too.

Also, it works on major public or public cloud computing architecture, providing application portability, and highly scalable architecture. There are a logging system and security to the infrastructure. There is access provided for using the deployed apps.

Conclusion                             

Cloud Foundry is the innovation in the cloud computing world that is here to stay. With its amazing architecture and features, it offers a competitive edge to the customers. Also, it delivers computational efficiencies with decreased error chances. It can help the developers in the application lifecycle management, deployment, and execution.

No doubt, this will dramatically change the application developments, design, and delivery. In short, building, testing, and deployment of applications will become faster and efficient. The open platform technology Cloud Foundry will change digital businesses' face with faster speed and excellent services.

Please share your valuable inputs in comment area to make the article more informative.