The evolution of modern apps: rewiring at the cellular level for optimum resiliency
Consult the University of Google and you’ll find a digital froth of quick-trick-experts; each one jockeying for top spot as the definitive voice on resiliency. They’re all there: consulting firms, motivational speakers, universities, health centres, business mags, researchers, celebrities, coaches — even random bystanders with only a WordPress site and access to a keyboard.
Over the past few months, the keywords “resilience” and “well-being” have hit breakout levels in Google Trends. Breakout occurs when the popularity of a search term rises so quickly, that to describe it in terms of percent increase becomes meaningless (think: over 5000%).
It seems as though a heckuvalot of people are interested in what builds resiliency and well-being during the stress and crisis of a global pandemic. While there are plenty of generalizations, and a few pop-pranksters cashing in on keyword trends, there’s also some legit data to chew on for the intellectual types — especially related to advances in the field of neurology. For example, before medical imaging, scientists believed that our brain development was mostly over by the age of 12 (a scary thought for those of us who have lived with teens). However, we now know that the practise of learning alters the structure of our brain at the cellular level so we can keep developing. Phew. This neuroplasticity — the brain’s ability to grow and change in response to experience — rewires the brain for better resilience.
So, what are the implications for technology? What if we could architect neuroplasticity into our applications? Is it possible to alter our apps at the cellular level to prepare them to meet changes, and therefore become more resilient?
Great news, we can. Or, at least, our smart developer friends can. On an OpenShift Platform the most resilient applications are those that are designed to meet changes at the cellular level. The container environment allows teams to architect applications that take advantage of multi-node deployments in the cluster. This gives an app the flexibility to shift between nodes to handle load fluctuations and withstand service disruptions during planned maintenance or unplanned outages. Unlike single-node deployments, apps deployed on multi-nodes are hard-wired for resilience, optimizing their capacity to change in response to experience. Evolutionary, indeed.
At the BCDevExchange, we’re celebrating the good health and well-being of our Platform, as recently validated by the Senior Enterprise OpenShift Engineers at RedHat. <insert applause>. This exhaustive two-week check-up found the Platform to be in great shape with optimal configuration and set-up. But we’re not removing the FitBit yet. Our next steps include helping our project teams take full advantage of the Platform’s High-Availability capabilities. Imagine our collective resiliency rising so fast that it hits breakaway. And, then, who knows? The next time you google “resilience” you just might see our logo trending alongside “neuroplasticity”.
For some pro tips and best practices, check out our new OpenShift App Resiliency Guidelines in DevHub (https://developer.gov.bc.ca/Resiliency-Guidelines). And, while you’re at it, have a look at the new Post-Outage Application Health Checklist that aims to help you ensure your app has recovered successfully after planned or unplanned maintenance and accidental service disruptions on the Platform (https://developer.gov.bc.ca/Post-Outage-Application-Health-Checklist)
