Microservices

As a result of microservices, service development, testing, problem-solving, deployment, and updating can be done by cross-functional teams independently, leading to faster deployment and troubleshooting. Automation of manual processes and the ability to share the workload reduces the overall development lifecycle.

Application development greatly benefits from the growing popularity of microservices — a technique that involves a group of loosely coupled services. Netflix and Amazon are part of the early pioneers of microservices.

What Are Microservices?

Microservices are an architectural approach to software development based on building an application as a collection of small services. There is no standard definition for what amount of code constitutes a “small service.” Some experts say it’s about the size at which a team can query the service’s health with a single request that returns a “yes” or “no” answer. Similarly, a service is too big if it requires more than one team to manage it.

Each service has its unique and well-defined role, runs its process, and communicates via HTTP APIs or messaging. Teams can deploy, upgrade, scale, and restart each microservice independent of all the sibling services in the application. These microservices are typically orchestrated by an automated system, making it possible to have frequent updates of live applications without affecting the end-users.

Benefits of the Microservices Framework

Microservices are an evolution of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) — and some would argue that microservices are just SOA rebranded to make it hip again. Cloud-native microservices take the SOA concept to a new level, though. The difference now is that cloud infrastructure has finally caught up to the SOA concept so that loosely-coupled services (aka microservices) are now feasible to implement and manage at scale.

Here are some benefits of microservices architecture:

Enabling independent development. Microservices architecture enables small autonomous teams to independently develop, deploy, and scale their respective services. This enablement allows more developers to work on smaller codebases, lightening the workload.

Increasing development speed. Microservices parallelize development, thereby speeding up the production cycle exponentially.

Promoting continuous delivery. The adoption of microservices facilitates using DevOps, continuous integration, continuous delivery (CI/CD), and containers. There will be no need to deploy code simultaneously as developers do in a monolithic environment. This feature makes updates frequent and fast, enabling CI/CD.

Discover the Ten Commandments of Microservices

The Need for Microservices Orchestration

Microservices orchestration manages complex production processes to enable developers to operationalize containers at scale. Orchestration coordinates workload management, communication, and microservices architecture readability. Microservices orchestration ensures that there is no data loss in the process of coordination. This capability eases system development for developers and enables support teams to fix problems quickly.

Several microservices orchestration solutions are available in the market. Here are some factors to consider when deciding on an orchestrator for your microservices:

Multiplatform integration. All teams should be able to use the orchestrator at once. For example, the tool should support teams using an open-source developer platform and object programming languages.

Ease of use. Ideally, the orchestrator has a simple environment where the microservice interaction is easily visible.

Error processing. A microservices orchestrator allows developers to set up multiple retries and timeouts when a malfunction occurs.

Non-synchronized workflow support. During development, some workflows run parallelly and may not be simultaneous. An orchestrator should save current data, stabilize general performance, and simplify development.

Scalability. Unlike monolithic applications requiring multiple instances for every component, microservices allow teams to scale a part of an application independently, according to the component’s resource needs.

Challenges with Microservices

Microservices have many advantages, but migrating away from a monolith introduces challenges.

Here are some drawbacks of using a microservice architecture:

Complexity. With a microservices architecture, service discovery, networking, testing, and monitoring become more complex and difficult, if not impossible, to manage following reliable older systems and practices. And the problem is amplified as the number of services grows.

Excess Resource Consumption. Tools that once seemed essential, such as logging, are now racking up huge bills that can send a microservices migration into negative return on investment (ROI) territory. Although microservices support the efficient use of resources, they can also increase resource consumption as services grow. Each microservice would need its own container and instance, which may increase the CPU and storage use.

Routing Microservices. In a traditional microservices approach, teams run only the small services they need and nothing else. It’s a sleek setup, but these services are not aware of each other until you step in to orchestrate them. Orchestrating services requires time and resources beyond the engineering reach of many small to midsize organizations.

Relationship between Microservices and Containers

A microservice architecture splits applications into different services that perform specific functions. Each microservice has a unique logical function for each part of a monolithic application.