Microservices are an architectural approach to the development of applications that breaks a project up into smaller, more independent services that communicate with each other over APIs. Using microservices can speed up application development by reducing the complexity of each piece of the project. Individual microservices may be reused across multiple projects.
Discover how Veeam Data Platform can help protect your data security in your cloud, hybrid or on-premises environment.
Historically, online applications used a monolithic architecture. With this approach to software development, all the processes within a project are tightly coupled together. A monolithic SaaS project might contain several components, including:
The issue with monolithic architectures is that if the web application sees a surge in demand, the whole system must scale. In addition, as the codebase grows, making changes to it gets much harder. In the long term, this can create technical debt. If part of your codebase relies on old or outdated libraries or you'd like to move to a new framework for certain features, issues with other parts of the codebase may hold you back.
With microservices, each component is a standalone service. The user service is independent of the payment system, which is independent of the content system, and so on. The services do not share any code with each other. Rather, they communicate with each other over APIs.
Because each component is standalone, it's possible for them to be written in entirely different languages if desired. In addition, if one component fails, that doesn't necessarily have to bring down the entire application. Other aspects of the application that do not depend on that component can still function as normal.
A service-oriented architecture is one where applications are broken down into modules. These modules have clearly defined roles and are smaller than monolithic applications, making SOA similar to the microservices approach. The key difference between SOA and microservices architectures is the scope of the architecture.
Modules built for SOA are shared and reused enterprise-wide. In contrast, microservices rely on modules that are designed to function independently. That's not to say that components written for a microservices architecture can't be reused, but the approach is different. For example, modules built for an SOA application may all share the same storage layer and communicate using the same enterprise storage bus (ESB). In a microservices environment, each service would have a separate API and may use its own storage.
Microservices have several advantages, especially when an application is designed from scratch to use this model.
The power and flexibility of microservices makes them a popular choice for large, complex applications. However, there are some challenges to deploying them.
There are many tools and technologies that are used to manage microservices architectures. Here are some key technologies that are frequently seen in environments using microservices.
Containers are a key part of microservices architectures. They allow for the rapid deployment of microservices applications in a predictable and efficient way. There are several varieties of containerization tools, ranging from traditional LXC Linux Containers to the now near-ubiquitous Docker. Containers are ready-to-run versions of applications that contain all the libraries and other information required, allowing for one-click deployment in almost any environment.
While it's possible to manage containers by hand on a small deployment, organizations that run multiple docker deployments across several cloud services will need a way of automating this process. Solutions, such as Kubernetes, allow for large-scale automation. Developers can use a human-readable data serialization language called YAML to define to define their containers.
Each microservice communicates with other microservices via REST APIs. When there's a small number of known services, having these services communicate directly is simple enough. As the environment becomes more complex, it becomes less efficient to have services communicating directly with each other. API gateways and management tools make it easier for developers to integrate prebuilt services. The gateway receives the requests and passes them on to the systems that sit behind them. If you need to change anything about the underlying services, the only thing that needs to be updated is the gateway. Your other services can continue to pass requests to the gateway as normal.
A service registry is an effective way of keeping track of the microservices that are available to send requests to. A service registry is a database of services, their instances and their locations. In some models, a service registry may also be responsible for invoking health checks using each service's API to confirm that they're currently able to handle requests. Some container management systems, such as Kubernetes, have their own built-in service registries, for easier service discovery and management.
Circuit breakers are used to monitor the health of services in a microservices architecture. When a circuit breaker is in place, microservices can communicate with each other as normal, and the circuit breaker keeps a count of any errors. If the number of errors detected reaches a certain threshold within a given time period, the circuit breaker will activate. If this number is not reached, the circuit breaker will set the count back to zero and continue monitoring. This helps ensure the reliable operation of the microservices, accounting for any acceptable timeouts or other errors.
Microservice architecture is useful for any environment where a web-facing application needs to be able to evolve and scale over time. Microservices are used in everything from gaming and e-commerce to logistics and finance.
E-commerce solutions provider Bigcommerce advocates for the use of microservices architecture and headless e-commerce solutions for some of its clients. It cites increased agility and flexibility as some of the key benefits of this architecture.
Microservices allow health care providers to create separate but loosely coupled applications that can work together and have access to only the data they need. Using a microservices architecture provides several advantages over traditional ESB systems. There's no single point of failure, so issues with one system won't impact other potentially more critical systems. In addition, testing and security become more manageable when systems are isolated. Maximizing systems and data availability in a health care setting is crucial, and the modern microservices approach is becoming increasingly popular because it helps achieve these goals.
Many organizations in the banking and finance sector rely heavily on legacy systems that are difficult to update. Rather than attempting to modify a monolithic legacy codebase, many organizations are using microservices that connect to that existing codebase to provide extra functionality. Newer financial institutions are able to start from the ground up, designing systems based on microservices and individual APIs. Older institutions can keep their monolithic codebase while still making improvements to the user experience and building newer features that interface with that code. Combined with systems, such as Veeam's data security and protection systems for financial services, organizations can feel confident their systems are robust and user data is protected.
The transportation and logistics sector is leading the adoption of many technologies, including Internet of Things technologies, which can be useful for supply chain tracking. One prominent project, NIMBLE, adopted a microservices architecture approach to federated IoT, offering reliable and scalable real-time monitoring and optimization of supply chains.
By taking a microservices-based approach to development, organizations can test new devices and technologies quickly and without interfering with existing workflows. Given the 24-hour nature of modern supply chains, this agility is an incredibly useful feature.
Veeam makes it easy to manage backups and data security, whatever environment your data is hosted in. Whether you're using a monolithic on-premises architecture, primarily use third-party SaaS providers, such as Salesforce, to manage your customer information or host applications in the cloud, Veeam can help you protect your data.
We offer backup and recovery solutions for AWS, Azure, Google and IBM cloud platforms and Kubernetes deployments, as well as popular virtualization solutions. Our tools are designed to slot into your existing configuration as seamlessly as possible.
We offer free community editions of many of our tools. For example, Kasten K10 is free to use for up to five nodes. This gives users a chance to test the system before deciding whether to deploy it on a larger scale. Time-limited trials of our enterprise products are also available.
Protect your organization from data breaches and loss with the Veeam Data Platform.