5 key ingredients of Microservices Architecture (MSA) you should not ignore

At the helm of Information Technology is the innovation of cutting-edge practices that optimize the complete software delivery lifecycle. One such outcome of this innovative mindset is Microservices Architecture (MSA). Microservices comes from the family of Cloud-Native that aims to change the implementation of backend services radically. In no time, Microservices has emerged as a digital disruptor and a differentiator to stay ahead of the competition. Per statistics, Microservices reduced the overall development time by a whopping 75 percent.

What drive-through did to the food industry, Microservices are doing to Software Industry

The invention of a drive-through in America revolutionized the culture of fast food. People were served food on the go, real-fast and hot. The idea was such a hit that other businesses jumped on the bandwagon. Drive-through established itself as the ultimate fast-track platform for delivering products/services efficiently.

Just like a drive-through, Microservices are enabling the pinnacle of efficiency in software development. The main aim of Microservices is to shy away from the monolithic application delivery. It breaks down your application components into standalone services (Microservices). These services then must undergo development, testing, and deployment in different environments. The services’ numbers can be in 100s or 1000s. Additionally, teams can use various tools for each service. The resultant will be mammoth tasks coupled with an exponential burden on the operations. The process complexities and time-battle will also be a nightmare.

Companies such as Netflix and Amazon have lauded the benefits of Microservices. It instills application scalability and drives product release speed. Companies also leverage Microservices to stay nimble and boost their product features.

Microservices function effortlessly when a few key ingredients from a part of its architecture. Let’s study them.

1. Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)

From a release standpoint, Microservices needs to ensure a continuous loop of software development, testing, and release. Therefore, when you look at Microservices and its practical implementation, you cannot ignore CICD. Establishing a CICD pipeline through Infrastructure as Code (IaC) minimal operational hurdles and deliver a better user experience in the application management.

2. API Gateway for request handling

Microservices leverage different communication protocols for internal use. The API Gateway will route HTTP requests via reverse proxy towards endpoints of internal Microservices. The API gateway works as the single URL source for application to map their request internally to the Microservices. An API’s key functions are Authentication, Authorization, Logging, and Proxying. With an API gateway, it becomes easy to invoke these functionalities at desired efficiency. API gateway also helps Microservices to retrieve data from multiple services in one-go, thereby improving overhead and overall user experience.

3. Toolchain for automation

CICD and Microservices work hand in glove. Your Microservices architecture needs a set of the toolchain that powers automation to ensure the CICD pipeline is well oiled for uninterrupted performance. These tools span build environment, testing, and regression, deployment, image registry, and platform.

4. Configuration component to save time

The idea is to avoid restructuring while running multiple configurations in Microservices. There are multiple configurations used in different services. These include formats, date, time, etc. With rising service requests managing these configurations becomes treacherous. Further, these configurations mustn’t be held static, rather they should run dynamically to suit multiple environments. Also, storing such configuration in source code will affect the API. Therefore, it is essential to use a component for managing configuration.

5. Infrastructure Scalability and Monitoring

Microservices involves multiple deployments of APIs across the IT infrastructure. This means it is essential that infrastructure provisioning is in the auto-pilot mode to ensure APIs run independently. Therefore, it is viable to have a robust infrastructure that can scale on demand while maintaining performance and efficiency.

Infrastructure monitoring is a key aspect of Microservices, which is also a distributed architecture. Distributed tracing becomes critical to ensure efficient tracking of multiple services at different endpoints allowing complete visibility.

What do we infer

Microservices is slated for widespread adoption without a doubt. As cloud-native technologies gain traction, Microservices would increasingly become a necessity. By 2025, we should expect 90 percent of the applications depending on Microservices architecture.

Before any organization thinks of reaping the benefit of Microservices for scalability, they must remember one thumb rule – the real potential is hidden in its building blocks discussed above. These blocks ensure that one gets a robust Microservices architecture to enable continuous software delivery and upgrade practices.