CloudFoundry is a free, open source cloud computing platform supported by the non-profit CloudFoundry. It is not tied to any particular cloud service, but can be self-hosted or run on any cloud service preferred.
N/A
IBM Cloud Foundry
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
IBM Cloud Foundry is an IBM version of the open-source platform designed for building, testing, deploying, and scaling applications. Enterprises can run Cloud Foundry in a public isolated environment, while natively integrating with other IBM Cloud services, such as AI, Blockchain, and IoT.
As it is an open-source platform as a service, it is very easy to operate, scale, and deploy regardless of what programming language and framework it's written in. However, it could be improved in terms of scalability. There should be proper documentation for easier and clearer understanding to make the process smooth.
Support for Orgs and Spaces that allow for managing users and deployables within a large organization.
Easy deployment, deploying code is as simple as executing single line from CLI, thanks to build-packs.
Solid and rich CLI, that allows for various operations on the instance.
Isolated Virtual Machines called Droplets, that provide clean run time environment for the code. This used to be a problem with Weblogic and other application servers, where multiple applications are run on the same cluster and they share resources.
SSH capability for the droplet (isolated VM's are called droplets), that allows for real time viewing of the App code while the application is running.
Support for multiple languages, thanks to build-packs.
Support for horizontal scaling, scaling an instance horizontally is a breeze.
Support for configuring environment variable using the service bindings.
Supports memory and disk space limit allocation for individual applications.
Supports API's as well as workers (processes without endpoints)
Supports blue-green deployment with minimal down time
Simplicity - the command line tool provided can get you up and running within minutes.
Resourceful - IBM Cloud Foundry is built on top of the open source Cloud Foundry technology, so any resources you find online about Cloud Foundry generally can be applied.
Feature rich - provides all the necessary features for a cloud based platform, such as auto-scaling, 0 downtime deployment.
Does not support stateful containers and that would be a nice to have.
Supports showing logs, but does not persist the logs anywhere. This makes relying on Cloud Foundry's logs very unreliable. The logs have to be persisted using other third party tools like Elk and Kibana.
While Docker shines in providing support for volumes and stateful instances, Cloud foundry shines in providing support for deploying stateless services. Heroku shines in integrating with Git and using commits to git as hooks to trigger deployments right from the command line. But it does not provide on-premise solution that Cloud foundry provides.
CF is what we initially went with to establish a development pipeline and start our cloud journey, now we are expanding this and although we are now pulling in many other tools and functions around CF, it is not being replaced. It stands out as having a key place working ‘with’ git, Kubernetes, IBM cloud etc, not against or segregated from it.
Positive impact, since it simplifies the deployment time by a huge margin. Without cloud foundry, deploying a code needs coordination with infrastructure teams, while with cloud foundry, its a simple one line command. This reduces the deployment time from at least few hours to few minutes. Faster deployments promote faster dev cycle iterations.
Code maintenance such as upgrading a Node or Java version is as simple as updating the build-pack. Without cloud foundry, using web logic, the specific version only supports a specific version of Java. So updating the version involves upgrading the version of web logic that needs to involve few teams. So without cloud foundry, it takes at least few days, with cloud foundry, its a matter of few mins.
Overall, happier Developers and thats harder to quantify.
IBM Bluemix is mainly a foundation enabler at this stage, although our business plan does look promising.
The low cost of development on Bluemix for a start-up like us is so helpful......we had no spare cash for this project besides what we could save or borrow at first, and that wasn't much. We are still trying to attract venture capital to cover the main Cordova Coding effort plus the launch "Cash Burn".
Features like push notifications, mobile-back end, and world-beating security help us to sell our SaaS products/services.
The pure (usually!) functionality of IBM products and services is very rewarding to work with.They are so insightful and thoughtful, to say naught of clever!
