Principles of Microservice Architecture

Independent and Autonomous/Self-Governing Services

For each microservice to operate independently from other services in an application, it must be self-contained. Each service should work independently, using its own resources, including separate databases and business logic, without depending on other services.

The primary purpose of this principle is to ensure that the creation, testing, and deployment of individual services do not interfere with the functionality of other system components. This aligns with the notion of decentralization, which involves delegating autonomy and accountability for one's activities to individual services rather than giving power to a single unit or body.

 

 

API Aggregation

Irrespective of the constraints imposed by programming languages, it is essential for a developer to have the capacity to design microservices that provide communication across different microservices throughout the entire system. Interoperability between microservices is crucial, hence API aggregation is commonly used to combine different architectural methods, like REST, even if the microservices in the same system are developed in different programming languages.

Flexibility

Microservice flexibility refers to the ability of a microservice to easily adapt or be adapted in response to changing conditions or requests. If you have created an adaptable microservice and added a functionality that received negative feedback and eventually did not succeed, it would not be challenging to remove it from the service. By sticking to this idea, your project becomes more adaptable to potential future revisions.

Scalability

As an operating system performance-preserving design principle, it permits modifications to your application in response to fluctuations in data, complexity, and traffic.

As the holiday season approaches, the application is expected to experience a big increase in traffic due to a high demand for supplies. Scalability, in this sense, involves modifying the capacity of all necessary microservices, such as databases and servers, to effectively manage the increasing amount of traffic.

There are several ways to achieve scalability, such as 

• Service partitioning, 
• Load balancing, 
• Horizontal scaling, and 
• Caching.

Constant monitoring

The likelihood of errors occurring in the system increases significantly when a substantial number of microservices work together in synchronization to execute an application correctly. Identifying and resolving these problems becomes a challenging task as the intricacy of the structure grows. To prevent this, you can install continuous monitoring, which allows for quick resolution of faults and assures the smooth functioning of your application.

Constant monitoring can be achieved by using these methods:

• Logging and metrics
• Distributed tracing
• Health checks 
• Alerting and notifications

Failure Isolation / Failure Resilience

As an application developer, it is imperative to be consistently ready to confront malfunctions. To mitigate such occurrences, fault-tolerant approaches should be incorporated into the microservices design process. Due to the failure of a specific system, this principle aids in mitigating the effect of failures on the entire system.

Numerous methods exist for incorporating fault tolerance into an application:

Substantiate multiple instances in the event of a failure by incorporating redundancy. Service isolation through the separation of functions. In lieu of a complete service breakdown, the microservices ought to degrade gracefully. To isolate and detect failures, circuit breakers should be installed in every microservice.

Real-time Load Balancing

A situation in which the database must simultaneously retrieve data from multiple microservices may arise when a client initiates the request and the server processes it. Consequently, the load balancer is activated and determines which services will utilize which portion of the central processing unit or GPU to retrieve the data, as well as the manner in which the client request will be transmitted.

It is essential that this entire procedure be executed in "Real-time" to eliminate any potential waiting time for the client.

Consider that you are shopping on Amazon through the payment portal. A number of databases, including CC, UPI integration, and others, are being queried by the Amazon application at that time. The application can execute multiple operations in a reduced amount of time with the assistance of real-time load balancing.

Inclusion of DevOps

 

The first step is to ascertain the precise definition of DevOps. DevOps is a set of approaches used to assure continuous support by cooperating, communicating, and automating the development and operation processes with the help of operations teams. Integrating DevOps principles into a project improves intermicroservice communication and collaboration, leading to increased effectiveness and efficiency in the software development process. DevOps enables increased speed, flexibility, and improvement for microservices.

DevOps can be implemented by utilizing Continuous Monitoring, Automated Testing, Development, and Continuous Delivery. As a consequence, this leads to enhanced software quality and a reduced time-to-market. The primary DevOps tools employed for managing microservices are Docker and Kubernetes.

Versioning

Is it not astonishing that platforms like Amazon and Netflix continually uphold up-to-date software versions and remain compatible with the latest gadget updates? This can be achieved by employing versioning. "Versioning" is the term used to describe the act of providing services using the latest technological stacks available at a given time.

Versioning enables the updating and management of services with the latest versions. Current clients that are using the services see minimal disruption. The versioning process involves the alteration of version numbers, service interface, requests, and responses through URL and Header Versioning.

 

Availability

When firms operate globally, any instance of downtime is considered unacceptable. Availability is a crucial design principle that governs the development of services to run continuously, or at least for the maximum possible duration. Failure to achieve this can result in significant financial losses for every minute that the services are not accessible.

Availability immediately signifies that microservices are available around-the-clock.

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Happy Exploring!