Today, Veertu Labs is thrilled to pull back the curtain on three Anka toolsets, our latest endeavors geared towards making macOS and iOS development infrastructure management simple and streamlined. Anka technology is a suite of three products that are built to bring the experience of working with containers to the complex macOS/iOS development process. We are inviting all macOS/iOS developers and as well as DevOps engineers to give Anka a try by joining our trial program (www.veertu.com). We’ll provide launch dates and general availability of these solutions soon as well.
It’s no secret that container-based app development and deployment has significantly changed the landscape of developer operations. Why a container approach? Because containers are built to be extremely lightweight, easy to interact with, and extremely portable. While macOS cannot yet be run inside a container, (different than running Linux and Windows containers on macOS), we have taken the concepts of container-based DevOps to iOS/macOS development with Anka.
Anka’s core hypervisor technology enables creation and execution of extremely lightweight and responsive macOS VMs on Apple hardware. The performance of build and test operations is extremely critical in using virtual environments successfully. As such, we developed a proprietary paravirtual network and block drivers in our hypervisor for macOS VMs. Then, we built a container ecosystem around Anka, so developers and systems engineers can effectively work with it for iOS and macOS development.
A Container Ecosystem
We built the container ecosystem with three components: Anka Build, Anka DevOps, and Anka Device. Anka Build enables systems engineers and developers to build an on-premise macOS private cloud on Apple hardware. Anka Build consists of Anka’s native virtualization technology, as well as the Anka Registry and Controller services for storing and managing the on-premise macOS private cloud. Anka Build enables familiar workflows used with many large cloud providers by allowing you to create version-tagged macOS VMs and store them in the Anka Registry. With Anka Controller’s REST API, you can use stored VMs in Anka Registry to spin up fresh, isolated copies for development, build, or test.Anka DevOps is a combination of Anka Registry and the Anka client. Anka Registry stores your macOS virtual machines with proper versioning and optional tagging. Anka client is a lightweight program that runs on your developer machines, that can pull relevant build VMs and make them available for local, but managed development.
Anka Device extends Anka Build and Anka DevOps to allow iOS on-device testing within the macOS private cloud. Plug in any iOS device to Apple hardware running the Anka Build or Anka DevOps toolset to make real iOS devices available for your iOS CI system or to individual developers on-demand; Anka Device allows for the setup and management of the devices centrally in a private device cloud.
Anka Build, Anka Devops and Anka Device are the building blocks we think will completely transform infrastructure management for macOS or iOS development. The pace of growth of iOS app development is astounding and at the same time, the complexity and capabilities of these apps, both B2C and B2B are also increasing significantly. The iOS development methodologies have to stay ahead of the curve to make life easy for developers and publishers.
