Core Concepts
Quick Summary - Understanding Stacktic's core concepts, terminology, and the technology stack it leverages to automate full-stack application development.
Note: The required depth of knowledge varies based on your role and team association. Focus on sections relevant to your responsibilities.
Stacktic-Specific Concepts
| Concept | Description |
|---|---|
| Components | Fundamental building blocks representing services (MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Kafka, etc.) with complete configuration, dependencies, and operational requirements |
| Sub-Components | Granular elements within components (Kafka Topics, MongoDB Databases, MinIO Buckets) representing specific functionality |
| Links/Relationships | Bidirectional connections that automatically generate configurations, secrets, network policies, and API connections |
| Stack Topology | Visual and logical representation of your application architecture |
| Day 0/1/2 Operations | Lifecycle framework - Day 0 (Architecture & Design), Day 1 (Deployment), Day 2 (Operations & Management) |
| external_source_code | Component type that points to Git repositories and builds images using Kaniko in-cluster |
| image_base | Component type for importing pre-built container images from registries |
| Metadata-Driven Logic | Core engine that interprets component relationships and generates optimal configurations |
| Stack Versioning | Capability to save, branch, and manage multiple versions of your entire stack configuration |
| LiveView | Relationship-aware observability solution providing deep insights into stack layer interactions |
| Sections | Centralized configuration areas for managing resources, secrets, and custom attribute groupings |
| Stacktic Branch | Git branch where Stacktic pushes automated configurations, separate from main branch |
| Scale Forecast | Capacity planning feature using RPS, IO, and connection metrics to predict resource requirements |
| CISO Audit Report | Automatically generated security compliance report with recommendations and risk scoring |
Templating and Tools
| Tool | Purpose | Learn More |
|---|---|---|
| Kustomization | Template structure for efficient Kubernetes resource management and customization | Documentation |
| Helm Chart | YAML templating managed by Kustomization with overlays, bases, and features | Documentation |
| Cookiecutter | Framework for templating logic and UI conditions, streamlining code customization | GitHub |
| Kaniko | Container image builds in Kubernetes cluster | GitHub |
Developer Skills
For effective source code customization, developers should be familiar with:
- Dockerizing processes
- Managing dependencies
- Defining APIs
Infrastructure & Orchestration
CNCF Ecosystem Components
- Container Orchestration: Deep understanding of Kubernetes as the foundation, including CRDs, Operators, StatefulSets, and advanced scheduling concepts.
- Service Mesh (Istio/Linkerd): Traffic management, observability, and security at the mesh layer for microservices communication.
- GitOps (ArgoCD/Flux): Declarative continuous deployment using Git as single source of truth. Understanding of reconciliation loops and drift detection.
- Auto-scaling (KEDA/HPA/VPA): Event-driven autoscaling with KEDA, Horizontal Pod Autoscaler patterns, and Vertical Pod Autoscaler for right-sizing.
- Ingress Controllers: NGINX, Traefik, HAProxy for L7 load balancing and routing.
Apache & Open Source Stack
- Workflow Orchestration (Apache Airflow): DAG-based workflow management for ETL, data pipelines, and scheduled tasks.
- Streaming (Apache Kafka/Pulsar): Event streaming platforms with understanding of topics, partitions, consumer groups, and exactly-once semantics.
- API Gateway (Apache APISIX): Advanced traffic control, authentication, rate limiting, and observability at the API layer.
- Object Storage (MinIO): S3-compatible object storage for cloud-native applications, understanding buckets, policies, and lifecycle management.
- Search & Analytics (OpenSearch/Elasticsearch): Full-text search, log analytics, and distributed search architecture.
Security & Compliance (SecOps)
Access Control & Identity
- RBAC: Kubernetes Role-Based Access Control with Roles, ClusterRoles, ServiceAccounts, and binding strategies.
- OIDC/OAuth2: Identity providers integration (Keycloak, Dex, Auth0) for SSO and federated authentication.
- mTLS: Mutual TLS for service-to-service authentication and encryption.
Policy Enforcement
- OPA (Open Policy Agent): Policy-as-code with Rego language for admission control, authorization, and compliance.
- Network Policies: Kubernetes-native and CNI-specific policies for micro-segmentation and zero-trust networking.
- Pod Security Standards: Pod Security Policies replacement with restricted, baseline, and privileged profiles.
Secrets Management
- SOPS (Secrets Operations): Encryption of secrets in Git repositories with key management.
- External Secrets Operator: Integration with HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault.
- Sealed Secrets: Bitnami Sealed Secrets for GitOps-friendly secret management.
Observability & Performance
Metrics & Monitoring
- Prometheus Stack: PromQL, ServiceMonitors, AlertManager, recording rules, and federation.
- Grafana Ecosystem: Dashboards, Loki for logs, Tempo for traces, and Grafana Agent.
- OpenTelemetry: Unified observability framework for metrics, logs, and traces with OTLP protocol.
Performance Testing
- k6: Load testing with JavaScript-based scenarios, thresholds, and cloud/on-premise execution.
- Gatling/JMeter: Alternative load testing frameworks for specific protocols and scenarios.
- Chaos Engineering: Litmus, Chaos Mesh for resilience testing and failure injection.
Data & Persistence
Database Operators
- CloudNative-PG (CNPG): PostgreSQL operator with automated failover, backups, and pooling.
- MongoDB Operator: Automated MongoDB clusters with sharding and replication.
- Redis Operator: Redis Sentinel and Cluster modes with persistence options.
Message Queues & Streaming
- Strimzi (Kafka on K8s): Kafka operator with topic management, Kafka Connect, and MirrorMaker.
- RabbitMQ Operator: Clustering, quorum queues, and management policies.
- NATS: Lightweight messaging with JetStream for persistence.
Backup & Disaster Recovery
- Velero: Backup and restore of Kubernetes resources and persistent volumes.
- Kasten K10: Enterprise backup with application consistency and cross-cloud mobility.
- Longhorn: Distributed block storage with built-in backup capabilities.