Abstraction is easier, but with a twist

One of the biggest buzzwords in the technology space today is abstraction. Abstraction, at its highest level, involves removing certain pieces of work from you that you specifically need to do to get the job done. For example, if a developer needs to run code, they need to run code. They don’t need to build virtual machines or deploy networks. They simply need to run an application. Removing the need for a virtual machine or a network is abstracting away what the developer doesn’t need to spend time and focus on.

What abstraction does

Let’s take a look at what abstraction does from two sides – Dev and Ops.

From a Dev perspective, the goal of a developer is to plan out pieces of an application, write the code to make those pieces work, and deploy them to see how the pieces work together. However, to deploy the code, you used to need a server, an OS, and other components. With platforms such as Kubernetes, developers don’t need that anymore. Instead of having to worry about deploying virtual machines, developers simply have to write a Kubernetes manifest that contains a container image with the application inside of it. No more having to worry about day-one operations.

From an Ops perspective, infrastructure engineers or cloud engineers no longer have to worry about having to stop what they’re doing to order servers, deploy virtual machines, and fight to make an OS work as expected. Instead, they can write out a Kubernetes manifest and other API-driven techniques (such as IaC) to ensure that a Kubernetes cluster is up and running, operational, and ready to host developer code/container images.

What abstraction doesn’t do

One primary thing that abstraction doesn’t do is remove the need to think logically and from an architectural perspective for engineering-related work. Abstraction removes what’s now considered the low-hanging fruit of an environment. For example, a virtual machine with the need to deploy an OS and manage all the components can now be considered low-hanging fruit when the other option is to deploy a Kubernetes cluster and manage the infrastructure at the API level.

The important piece to remember is that engineers and developers still need to think. Abstraction isn’t about having a solution where you press a button or two and poof, your application is up and running with scaling and plenty of high availability. Abstraction at this level still requires solid architecture, planning, and repeatable processes.