Microservices – Micro Services

Microservices, also known as the microservice architecture, is an architectural style that structures a software application as a collection of services. This architectural approach enables development teams to align more closely with business requirements and develop, deploy, and scale services independently.  

Microservices are created with specific key principles as goals. They should be: highly maintainable, testable, loosely coupled, independently deployable, and organized around business capabilities.  

Additionally, each microservice is typically owned and managed by a small team. All these principles help ensure that each service can evolve independently of others, making the overall system more resilient and easier to manage and update.  

The microservice architecture allows for the rapid, reliable, and scalable delivery of complex applications. Furthermore, the system’s resilience is improved because failures are isolated to individual services rather than bringing down the entire application.

Key Features of Microservices

Here are more details of the microservices architecture:

1. Independently deployable: Each microservice can be deployed, upgraded, scaled, and restarted independently of others in the application.
2. Loosely coupled: Each service is a separate entity, but they interact with each other through APIs.
3. Highly maintainable and testable: Microservices can be developed and deployed independently, making them easier to manage and test.
4. Organized around business capabilities: Unlike specific technology layers (like UI or databases), microservices are organized around business needs and functionality.
5. Owned by a small team: A small team owns each service, the size of which can be regulated by the two-pizza rule (the team should not be larger than what two pizzas can feed).
6. Developed with a specific business focus: Every microservice is created with a business-oriented approach. This means that each microservice corresponds to a business objective.

The microservice architecture enables the rapid, reliable, and scalable delivery of complex applications. It’s also designed to handle the failure of a service without affecting the entire system.  

This architectural approach also allows development teams to be organized around business capabilities and to develop and deploy services independently of other teams.  

Origins of Microservices

The term “microservices” was popularized around 2014 by James Lewis and Martin Fowler, although the concepts had been practiced in various forms before.

The idea was to break down traditional monolithic applications (where all the functionalities were bundled together) into more manageable, loosely coupled services that could be developed and deployed independently.  

This shift was spurred by the rising complexity of managing monolithic architectures and the need for increased speed, agility, and scalability in software development and deployment.  

Challenges and Complexity of Microservices

Despite their benefits, implementing microservices also introduces new challenges. Because microservices operate as separate entities that communicate through APIs or events, this can slow response times and introduce more points of failure.  

Moreover, managing a distributed system with many independent services introduces operational complexity and overhead. Thus, a trade-off exists between the flexibility and resilience microservices offer and the added complexity they bring.  

Best Practices and Tools for Managing Microservices

There are several best practices to effectively manage microservices, such as treating servers as stateless entities, storing all data in databases or caches, and designing services to fail gracefully.

Regarding tooling, containerization technologies like Docker and orchestration systems like Kubernetes have become invaluable for managing microservices, enabling easy packaging and deployment of services.  

Similarly, adopting a DevOps philosophy – including practices such as continuous integration, continuous delivery (CI/CD), and infrastructure as code (IAC) – is often beneficial when working with microservices.  

Influence on Modern Software Development

Since their inception, microservices have become a significant influence on software development. They offer an alternative to monolithic architectures, providing a way to build applications that are more scalable, resilient, and adaptable to changing business requirements.  

Today, many leading tech companies, including Netflix, Amazon, and Uber, utilize microservices to handle their complex, evolving needs.

Despite the challenges and complexities, the advantages of microservices make them an attractive choice for many organizations. 

Microservices Explained in 5 mins