What is Microservices in cloud?

Introduction

A distinctive kind of building software systems available today is the Microservices or Microservice architecture. Microservices attempts to concentrate on advancing single-function modules with distinct interfaces and processes. The microservice architecture enables the applications to develop faster, thereby permitting innovation and enabling the installation of the latest features without any difficulties.

These components of microservices are increasingly becoming popular in recent days as organizations continue to develop into a more Agile system.

  1. What is microservices?
  2. Why microservices?
  3. Microservices advantages
  4. SOA vs microservices
  5. Web services vs microservices

1. What is microservices?

The adoption of an architectural method to develop software and create cloud applications where the software or application is made of a particular set of small separate services that operates on its own and communicates over APIs are known as microservices.

These services contain their peculiar stack that includes their database and data model. The communication between inter-services happens through an arrangement of event streaming, REST APIs, and message brokers. These services are controlled by independent teams. Each team utilizes different stacks for different services.

Microservices offer a lot of value to the organization as developing code is much simpler, and each service can be balanced separately from one another, thereby decreasing the waste and cost outlay.

Successful microservice examples include Amazon, Netflix, Uber, eBay, Twitter, Etsy, PayPal, The Guardian, and many other important organizations. These organizations have successfully progressed from monolithic to cloud microservices.

2. Why microservices?

The answer to what is microservices is clear. It is time to understand why an organization should evolve from its existing approach to microservices.

Most organizations traditionally begin with their infrastructures being a single monolith or several rigid, mutually dependent monolithic applications. These monolith applications transmit various functions for which the entire programming is done in an interconnected and consistent portion of the application code.  

If the need arises, detangling the application code is difficult as the code for these functions is merged as one. Any attempts to change or add even a single aspect in the monolith application can disturb the whole code for the application, which renders improvement a lengthy, slow, and expensive process.

This is why microservices architecture is preferred by a lot of organizations these days as this system breaks the large monolith applications into independent, smaller, and loosely coupled components. These small components are modeled to become responsible for separate tasks the communication with other components happens through the simple, commonly available APIs.

This microservices architectural model is believed to be predominantly perfect when there is a need for support for various platforms and appliances, such as desktop, mobile, web, Internet of Things, etc. This model is ideal when applications are large as it is easier to manage when the architecture is split down into smaller, independent modules that work in concert.

In a microservices architecture, as each independent component operates on a distinct process, it presents the IT teams with a more decentralized methodology in developing large software and also enables them to manage the distinct component to be deployed, reconstructed, reorganized, and administered independently. There is various microservices architecture tutorial available in the market to get started with.

3. Microservices advantages:

  • Agility and freedom:

Microservices, which are built as multiple small components enable the small, independent team for each component to obtain responsibility and ownership of their services. With these separate teams, they can work independently and hence, rapidly, which reduces the rundown and development time. This also gives the developer teams the freedom to develop and install services on their own.

  • Adaptability to Scaling

Microservices enable each service to be separately scaled to meet the requirements by the features of the application it maintains. The scalability feature allows the developers to ascertain the infrastructure requirements, costs, and demand for the service. Microservice can be easily scaled to amalgamate with third-party services.

  • Easy to deploy

Microservices facilitates constant integration and enables uninterrupted delivery. This makes it simple to seek novel thoughts and to switch back in situations where there are any failures. The economical benefits permit experimentation and trials. This also makes it uncomplicated to update code as per the requirements and reduce time to test for new features.

  • Increased productivity:

The microservice architecture breaks down the application into small pieces, and hence it is easier to understand change the code for developers. This also helps even a new developer in the team to learn and get productive quickly. Further, as the teams are not inter-dependent in an organization, the independence of individual development teams is increased as ideas can be implemented without having to synchronize and coordinate with a large IT team, unlike the usual culture.

  • Reusability:

As every software or application is divided into small, well-built components, the team can use the functions and codes for various purposes and other software. The components are usually spread around many servers or many data centers.  A code developed for certain software can be used in different software for different features. Thus, the developers can reuse the code and generate various facilities without developing the code from the beginning. 

  • Resistance to failure: 

The independent feature in the microservice enhances the application’s resilience to failure. With microservices, there is improved fault isolation. In case one microservice fails, the other continues to work instead of crashing the whole application.

  • Simplified security monitoring:

Microservices makes security monitoring simpler as each part or component of an application is independent and isolated. Hence, a security problem in one section will not affect the other areas of the application.

4. SOA vs microservices

Although microservices and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) possess similar features, there are differences between SOA and microservices. Various debates deem microservices to be a variation of the SOA while some completely deem microservices to be a model on its own.

SOA model has a particular data storage layer which is common to the entire services in that application while Microservices apps mostly have a dedicated database or storage layer for each service. Communication between different services or components in an SOA model is through simple and straight-forward methods such as enterprise service bus (ESB), while in microservices, the communication is done through intricate APIs. SOA is based on full-stack, while microservices show signs of monolithic nature. SOA is intended to share resources across services, while microservices are intended to horde services that function separately.

5.Web services vs microservices

Micro Services and Web Services are two distinct models in the development architecture of applications.  The difference between microservices and web services lies in its architecture and development style.

Web Service is used in the depiction of the usability and efficiency of an application to other applications, devoid of a user interface. In other words, it is a model that depicts an API over HTTP. Applications under web services can be developed under different technologies. The applications developed under web services are not restricted to a specific operating system or programming language, and the communication with each other is done through a common format. Web Service is a correlation that uses technology to link various services together into a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).

Applications built under Micro Services can be split into multiple independent components or services. This independent service can be a Web Service, which runs on a unique process and then dispatched independently without losing the reliability of the application.

Conclusion

If you are looking for an extensive course in Cloud Computing, then the 5.5-month online Postgraduate Certificate Program In Cloud Computing offered by Jigsaw Academy can be of help. This program helps interested learners become complete Cloud professionals.

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