Embrace Blockchain on Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes at Summit

These sessions at the upcoming Cloud Foundry Summit will explain how to implement blockchain on Cloud Foundry coupled with Kubernetes and build a CI/CD pipeline for the deployment.

The latest Cloud Foundry Summits have showcased a lot of content around hybrid deployments comprised of Kubernetes and Cloud Foundry. This was due to organizations figuring out how to combine and operate both to get the best of two worlds. In 2019, the Summit’s focus continues to expand as companies start to adopt blockchain to their decentralized technology stack.

In Philadelphia, two sessions will be provided to those looking to learn about blockchain on Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes. The first session (led by IBM) will showcase the latest developments with Blockhead, a service broker that enables Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes users to benefit from blockchain. The second one (presented by Altoros) will break down how to use hybrid deployments as a staging environment for a blockchain network and build an automated CI/CD pipeline.

Hyperledger Fabric as a blockchain network for Blockhead

Project Blockhead takes advantage of the Open Service Broker API specification to create a service-broker layer between a web application and a blockchain network. The new service controls the management of smart contracts by automating their creation and deployment and then exposing the required information to web apps.

Blockhead was initially built on top of the Containers Service Broker for Cloud Foundry, enabling blockchain nodes to be run inside an isolated Docker container and operate independently when deploying and binding smart contracts. Since Kubernetes can also integrate with the Open Service Broker API, Blockhead also works on this orchestration platform. (Fun Trivia: Project Blockhead was initially introduced at a Hackathon at Cloud Foundry Summit. You can sign up for the Hackathon here!)

During development, Blockhead relied on the Ethereum network. Nima Kaviani, Senior Cloud Engineer at IBM, will show how to implement Hyperledger Fabric as an alternative blockchain network.

Nima is a core contributor to the Cloud Foundry runtime. He has a Ph.D. in computer science and actively tweets and blogs about Cloud Foundry, Kubernetes, distributed systems, blockchain, and technology in general. Prior to joining IBM, Nima served as a System Architect at Curatio.me and as a Consultant and Cloud Engineer at ActiveState.

The session will run on Thursday, April 4, 2019, 11:35 a.m.–12:15 p.m. RSVP here.

A CI/CD pipeline for a blockchain built with K8s and Cloud Foundry

Cloud Foundry is handy for stateless web application developments—cf push is the only command a developer needs to deploy a new version of an app. However, Ethereum DApps are reliant on blockchain networks, which can be stateful.

Another wildcard session will cover how to make the best of Cloud Foundry to continuously deploy DApps to Kubernetes. CI/CD tools will be utilized to update DApps and ensure they are always on the latest version.

Additionally, Kibosh, an open service broker that employs the Cloud Foundry marketplace to provision Kubernetes Helm Charts, will be used to automate the process of running blockchain network components. This should provide stable and secure communications across the DApps in Cloud Foundry and the services in Kubernetes.

The session is targeted at operators of blockchain networks and anyone who runs heavy-load DApps on Ethereum-like networks. It will be presented by Yauheni Kisialiou and Arsenii Petrovich, Cloud Foundry Engineers at Altoros.

Yauheni Kisialiou specializes in enterprise cloud platform support and automation and has 8 years of experience in cloud administration and building cloud systems. Yauheni is highly adept at creating BOSH releases and utilizing it for deploying Cloud Foundry and other services. Now, he is part of the team working on container orchestration enablement for a leading insurance company.

Arsenii Petrovich is an expert in cloud and blockchain automation and in virtualization management and coding with OpenStack, AWS, GCP, vSphere, and Microsoft Azure. Arsenii was also involved in several technical publications, which cover deploying microservices, creating distributed systems, and building locked infrastructure areas.