Microservice FAQs

While understanding any new terms, we often come across several questions. The following are some of the most frequently asked questions that we come across while understanding microservices:

• Aren't microservices just like service-oriented architecture (SOA)? Don't I already have them? When should I start?

If you have been in the software industry for a long time, then seeing microservices would probably get you remembering SOA. Microservices does take the concept of modularity and message-based communication from SOA, but there are many differences between them. While SOA focuses more on code reuse, microservices follow the play in your own bundled context rule. Microservices are more of a subset of SOA. Microservices can be scaled on demand. Not all microservice implementations are the same. Using Netflix's implementation in your medical domain is probably a bad idea as any mistake in the medical report will be worth a human life. The simple answer for a working microservice can be to have a clear goal of the operation that the service is meant to perform and if it doesn't perform then what it should do in failures. There have been various answers to when and how to begin with microservices. Martin Fowler, one of the pioneers in microservices, states to start with the monolith and then gradually move to microservices. But the question here is—is there enough investment to go into the same phase again in this technological innovation era? The short answer is going early in microservices has huge benefits as it will address all concerns from the very beginning.

• How will we deal with all the parts? Who's in charge? 

Microservices introduce localization and self-rule. Localization means that the huge work that was done earlier will no longer be done by the central team. Embracing self-rule means trusting all teams to let them make their own decisions. This way, software changes or even migrations becomes very easy and fast to manage. Having said that, it doesn't mean that there's no central body at all. With more microservices, the architecture becomes more complex. The central team then should handle all centralized controls such as security, design patterns, frameworks, enterprise security bus, and so on. Certain self-governance processes should be introduced, such as SLAs. Each microservice should adhere to these SLAs and system design should be smart in such a way that if SLAs are not met, then the microservice should be dropped.

• How do I introduce change or how do I begin with microservice development?

Almost all successful microservice stories have begun with a monolith that got too big to be managed and was broken up. Changing some part of the architecture all of a sudden will have a huge impact, it should be introduced as  gradually kind of pide and rule. Consider asking yourself the following questions for deciding which part to break in the monolith—How is my application built and packaged? How is my application code written? Can I have different data sources and how will my application function when I introduce multiple data sources?—Based on the answers of these parts, refactor that part and measure and observe the performance of that application. Make sure that the application stays in its bounded context. Another part that you can begin is the part whose performance is worst in the current monolithic. Finding these bottlenecks that hinder change would be good for organizations. Introducing centralized operations will eventually allow multiple things to be run in parallel and benefit the greater good of the company.

• What kind of tools and technologies are required? 

While designing microservice architecture, proper thought should be given to the technology or framework selection for any particular stage. For example, an ideal environment for microservice features, cloud infrastructure, and containers. Containers give heterogeneous and easy to port or migrate systems. Using Docker brings resiliency and scalability on demand in microservices. Any part of microservices, such as the API Gateway or the service registry should be such that it should be API friendly, adaptable to dynamic changes, and not be a single point of failure. Containers require shifting on and off to a server, track all application upgrades for which proper framework either—Swarm or Kubernates for orchestrating framework deployments. Lastly, some monitoring tools to keep health checks on all microservices and take actions needed. Prometheus is one such famous tool.

• How do I govern a microservices system? 

With lots of parallel service development going on, there is a primitive need to have a centralized governing policy. Not only do we need to take care of certifications and server audits, but also centralized concerns such as security, logging, scalability, and distributed concerns such as team ownership, sharing concerns between various services, code linters, service-specific concerns, and so on. In such a case, some standard guidelines can be made such as each team should provide a Docker configuration file that bundles the software right from getting dependencies to building it and producing a container that has the specifics of the service. The Docker image can then be run in any standard way, or using orchestration tools such as Amazon EC2, GCP, or Kubernates.

• Should all the microservices be coded in the same language?

The generic answer to this question is it is not a prerequisite. Microservices interact with each other via predefined protocols such as HTTP, Sockets, Thrift, RPC, and so on, which we will see in much detail later on. This means different services can be written in completely different technological stacks. The internal language implementation of the microservice is not important as the external outcome, that is, the endpoint and API. As long as the communication protocols are maintained, language implementation is not important, while it is an added advantage for not just having one language, but adding too many languages will also result in an added complexity of system developers to maintain language environment needs. The entire ecosystem should not be a wild jungle where you grow anything.

Cloud-based systems now have a standard set of guidelines. We will look at the famous twelve-factor applications and how microservices adhere to those guidelines.