Developers have a new way to push their Spring Boot apps into production: Azure Spring Cloud.
Today at SpringOne Platform, Pivotal and Microsoft announced the Private Preview launch of Azure Spring Cloud (update: now available in Public Preview here), a fully-managed service for Spring Boot apps jointly built, operated, and supported by Pivotal and Microsoft. The service is the latest innovation for world-class support for Spring on Microsoft Azure.
The product is designed to be a production-ready, native Azure service that enables developers to focus on building scalable and maintainable microservices, not configuring infrastructure. The service will combine Pivotal’s expertise in Spring and cloud-native development, with Microsoft’s expertise in running elastic infrastructure and services on a global scale. At general availability, the service will be billed on a pay-as-you go basis.
Azure Spring Cloud is available today as a public preview.
Azure Spring Cloud combines several popular components into a complete runtime for Spring microservices, including:
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Spring Cloud provides tools and frameworks to make it easy to run Spring Boot apps in the cloud with features like a service registry, client-side load balancing, and circuit-breakers. Azure Spring Cloud manages these components on behalf of the developer, simple configuration details are all that need to be provided.
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kpack is a set of resource controllers for Kubernetes. kpack automates the creation and updating of container images from source code. kpack is not exposed to the developer directly. However, many organizations will appreciate the peace of mind knowing that industry-standards are used in Azure Spring Cloud. (kpack lies at the heart of Pivotal Build Service.)
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Azure Kubernetes Service is a fully-managed Kubernetes offering from Microsoft. The underlying Kubernetes primitives are not exposed to users—it all “just works!”
Here’s Why Your Developers Will Love Azure Spring Cloud
Your developers love Spring Boot because it eliminates boilerplate code and helps you build robust Java applications quickly. And they love Spring Cloud because it brings modern microservices patterns to Spring Boot applications. Azure Spring Cloud offers first-class support for Spring tools. And the service makes it quick, safe, and easy to deploy and operate cloud-native apps at scale on Kubernetes.
Here’s How It Works
If you already have an Azure account, navigate to the Azure Portal, create an instance of the service from the Marketplace, use the Azure CLI to push their applications, and connect to the Spring Cloud Service instances provided to you.
You can host multiple applications (microservices) with access to a common Spring Cloud Service Registry, Config Server, and Circuit-Breaker Dashboard that come pre-configured and managed. All powered by Azure Kubernetes Service underneath.
Easily bind your applications to existing Azure services like Cosmos DB, Azure Database for MySQL, Azure Cache for Redis, and more.
Use Azure Monitor to gain deep insights into application dependencies and performance.
With out-of-the-box support for aggregating logs, metrics, and distributed app traces you can easily visualize how your applications are performing, detect and diagnose issues across microservice applications and their dependencies, drill into monitoring data for troubleshooting and gain a better understanding of how end-users are actually using your apps.
View logs and metrics to assist in troubleshooting and capacity planning.
An Inside Look at Azure Spring Cloud
So what’s in the service? Well, our goal is to give you an easy way to build and run microservices at scale. Given that, you won’t be surprised by these key capabilities:
- A fully managed service offering built on AKS. If you’ve made Kubernetes the core of your infrastructure, or simply want to focus on delivering business value not managing infrastructure, Azure Spring Cloud fits in with your strategy.
- A complete runtime for Spring Boot apps. Azure Spring Cloud includes everything you need to run Spring Boot apps at cloud scale. Start, stop, deploy, and scale your app from the Azure CLI.
- Focus on your code. Spend less time with middleware and infrastructure. Just bring your source code or build artifact. Azure Spring Cloud does the rest!
- Managed Spring Cloud components. Azure Spring Cloud will automatically wire your app with Spring Cloud infrastructure. All you need to provide is your source code!
- Automated source-to-container builds. Azure Spring Cloud includes elements of Pivotal Build Service to simplify code-to-container workflows over the life of your app.
- Native integration with Azure services. Extend your Spring apps with Cosmos DB, Azure Database for MySQL, Azure Cache for Redis, and more.
- Out-of-the-box monitoring and tracing. Use Azure Monitor and Application Insights to gain deep insights on real-world application performance and operational telemetry. Quickly troubleshoot apps and resolve issues.
- Use your favorite tools. Use your preferred IDE (IntelliJ, Eclipse, VS Code, etc). Send logs, metrics, and events to your incumbent observability products. Azure Spring Cloud fits right in with your existing software lifecycle toolchain!
- Automated patching for a secure application stack. Pivotal and Microsoft automatically update your environment for you. Spring Cloud Services, Buildpacks, and the JDK will be regularly refreshed with patches and updates.
- Multi-region availability. Azure Spring Cloud will initially be available in Azure West Europe, Azure East US, Azure West US 2, and Azure Southeast Asia.
- Support for Spring starters. Azure Spring Cloud integrates with the tools and frameworks you already use. Access a portfolio of Spring starters to interact with Azure services in simple steps.
Sign-up for the Public Preview!
Interested in the puiblic preview? go here.
In the meantime, check out the Azure Spring Cloud pages on Pivotal.io and Microsoft Azure for more information.
SpringOne Platform attendees can learn more at these sessions and the Microsoft and Pivotal booths:
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