An Introduction to Microservices. Key Steps to Deploy Microservices in Production!

OpenShift is a popular Kubernetes-based platform. It offers many additional functions. OpenShift is known to help streamline the DevOps process. It does so by offering an intuitive development pipeline. Red Hat OpenShift training and certification will help you get closer to becoming an expert yourself.

It helps in making the management and deployment of cloud applications easier by offering integration with various tools. OpenShift is your key to working with some of the top companies in the world. This is a platform that only be correctly used by an expert.

We believe that you already have some level of knowledge and understanding about OpenShift, after all, that is why you are here at this blog. With this blog, we are going to know more about microservices. Once we are done exploring that topic, we will move on to the key steps to deploy microservices in production. Along the line, you will be getting details about a lot of other things as well.

We will explore all these aspects one by one. The first thing to do is to find out more about microservices. Let us take one step at a time to get to the bottom of this topic.

 

What do you understand by Microservices?

Microservices can be labelled as an approach as well as an architecture to writing software. Since these are an architectural framework, they can be distributed as well as loosely coupled. This means that if one team makes a change, it will not break the entire app.

The traditional, monolithic approach was all about building everything into a single piece. With microservices, however, everything is separate, only to work together in their quest to accomplish same tasks. Each separate process or component is referred as a microservice.

Thus, being lightweight, valuing granularity, and promoting the capacity of sharing similar processes varying across multiple apps. It plays a humongous role in optimizing app development towards a more cloud-native model.

One of the biggest questions that arise now is that why do companies use a microservice-based infrastructure. After all, this answer will directly influence whether you should be acing this skill or not.

Well, the aim is simple – to deliver quality software at a faster rate. We can say that employing microservices is just a means to an end. However, there are other aspects to take into consideration too. Just breaking your app into microservices will only take you so far. You need to manage, orchestrate, and deal with the data that is created and modified by them.

 

Where do Microservices Help?

We all know that microservices are much easier to test, update, build, and deploy when compared to monolithic apps. Thus, if a business is struggling to find an answer to the question that how can their business react swiftly to new demands, then this is it.

With the introduction of microservices, the various segments of a development team are open to the scope of working on the products simultaneously. This also helps them carry out things in an agile manner, while delivering value to the customers.

Many people wonder whether microservices have any connection with Linux containers or not. Well, there is clearly a connection there and we are going to explore it in the next section of this blog.

 

Its Link to Linux Containers

Linux containers are known to provide the microservice-based app an appropriate application deployment unit as well as self-contained execution environment. It is considerably easier to fully take advantage of hardware and easily orchestrated services such as networking, security, and storage when we talk about microservices in containers.

In fact, as per the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, containers and microservices together have the potential to be the foundation for cloud-native application development. There is a lot that starts with microservices in containers. This includes making is easier to optimize and transform existing applications, and enabling faster development.

 

What are the Common Characteristics of a Microservice Architecture

Your use case might be different from what is most tested. In this section of the blog, we are going to give you the common characteristics of a microservices architecture. You might not find these to be the top swaying factors for your scope of work.

However, these are generally considered to be the most influential factors in building an architecture to help a business achieve the kind of agility they strive for. Here is what you should know about its characteristics.

1. Independence

Independence is a key factor for any component or service. This helps in the reduction of coupling to other data, lifecycle, teams, and deployments. It comes as no surprise that the more independent a component or service is, the less impact it is considered to shadow in when changing that component.

When considering independence, these are the five areas to strive for

• Independent data
• Independent teams
• Independently testable
• Independently built
• Independently deployable   

        2.CI/CD Workflow

It is important for the microservices platform to support automated and integrated workflow. This allows in supporting continuous integration and delivery.

       3. Survivable

The simple rule followed here is SCALE – KILL – SURVIVE

The service must survive through the processes of being scaled up, scaled down, and even being killed. And it is the duty of the microservices platform to ensure this happens as easily as possible.

        4. Operator Application Density

Operator application density is about how the professional manages the services landscape without putting much pressure on the operations workload. Services sprawl is one of the biggest issues that need to be dealt with here. The microservices platform should be build to handle multiple applications per operational platform.

        5. Discoverable

It is integral to have the services easily discoverable. It is the duty of the microservices platform to care where the services are.

 

Key Steps to Deploy Microservices in Production

The one key thing to note before you move any further is that a distributed microservices architecture is not fit to work well in all application types or enterprises. However, it does work wonders in multiple situations.

Microservices are famous for promoting a modular application design. Along with this, they facilitate flexibility. Thus, giving companies the chance to freely pick development languages, integration processes, frameworks, runtime infrastructure, and code builds.

Here are the key things to keep in mind when deploying microservices in production.

1. Design for Failure

A microservices architecture is distributed and decoupled with various singular app components having multiple dependencies. That aside, this disaggregation facilitates components to receive updates, scale independently, and operate without any base reliance on the responsiveness or availability of other microservices.

An organization should always design and deploy microservices in such a way so as to accommodate for any failure. Applications must recover gracefully from any component-level failures as well as tolerate the failure of microservices components.

       2. Distributed Governance

Cross-functional microservices teams with Agile development practices and a DevOps culture has replaced the traditional IT silos. Today, teams work around the product – the microservice-oriented or microservice application. The job role system is gradually becoming obsolete wherein one manager was responsible for the product’s development and delivery.

To be able to design and deploy microservices successfully, it is best to create a culture that promotes minimal restrictive processes along with the responsibility of acknowledging and fixing problems as they occur. The key is the optimize for speed and not for efficiency.

      3. Incorporate Monitoring & Troubleshooting

Failures are a part of any production. Multiple microservices often times leads to an application failure when it gets too much. This generally happens when applications are constructed from a set of microservice Legos, which is known to complicate the process of monitoring and troubleshooting systems.

Thus, the best step to take is incorporating monitoring and troubleshooting into your microservices design.

       4. Using Cloud Services for Production Infrastructure

A microservices architecture is composed of applications consisting of independently scalable and discrete components. Cloud services enable microservices. Thus, making it more convenient and cost-effective to run app functions as distinct components.

It is advisable to build and deploy microservices in the cloud rather than going the traditional IT infrastructure way. VM services might also come in handy. But it is still better to take the aid of cloud Kubernetes services like Google Kubernetes Engine, Azure Kubernetes Service, and AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service.

      5. Decentralized Data Management

Enterprise data centres are known for often consolidating storage volumes and databases onto a few systems. This helps them cut licensing costs simplify application, security, and policy management, and improve operational efficiency. This is referred to as monolithic approach and these database features might not suit every situation.

Software developers love their freedom of choosing the finest database for the job in hand. Cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure or AWS help them assure this.

 

Conclusion

There are a lot of things to know about microservices and their deployment. A training and certification course from the best fit institute will help you in getting ahead in the field.

Starting your journey with Grras Solutions is the best step to help you move forward now!