How microservices and containers increase business efficiency

Any application or web service released to the market goes through a long development and testing phase. But you can’t delay the release too much – the product may lose its relevance. Rolling out a raw version is also wrong, it harms the reputation, and increases the risk of hacking or serious hacking. So companies have to maneuver to speed up the release of the product, but at the same time not harm the quality.

The advent of microservice architecture and containerization technologies has changed the development world. The understanding came that the traditional approach is not perfect and it is possible to work more efficiently. We tell what has appeared and how it has affected the ability of a business to launch new products.

Why are microservices so popular?

Microservices are a way of developing software that involves “chunking” the product code. Unlike the traditional monolithic way, where the application is a single unified solution, the microservices architecture is a set of smaller, independent modules. Each module runs the application process as a separate service.

All services have their own logic and database and also perform certain functions. They are stored independently of each other, which means that each process can be built, tested, deployed, or updated separately without affecting the entire application.

For users, microservices are no different from a monolith. They will have the same interface and even functionality. But under the hood, things look very different. Microservices are not one specific technology, they are seen as an evolution of the long-standing concept of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), supplemented by the advent of the concept of containers, and increased automation through development approaches such as continuous delivery (CD) and continuous integration (CI).

A microservice architecture outperforms a monolith for many reasons:

• Flexibility and scalability. Making changes to a legacy monolithic application comes with risks, as a change to one component can negatively impact another. Microservices are self-contained, so updates can be made without looking at other application components. This leads to faster development and release of versions and ultimately allows companies to release products not in a year, but in a couple of months.
• Multilingual and cross-platform. With microservices, an application is not tied to a single technology stack. It’s easy to mix programming languages ​​and development environments with them, and just as easy to roll back. The less code in one application, the easier it is to work. It’s easier to create a solution that works equally well in different environments.
• Solution security. In microservices, the visibility of network dependencies is important, as well as consistent access and security for each microservice. Knowledge of scanning containers and cluster networks, as well as the use of a service mesh, will ensure that your environment uses all possible tools to be at the highest level of security.
• Reducing errors. Difficult to cross the boundaries between microservice modules limit the technical possibility of generating errors, in particular, cascading ones.
• Simplify and speed up work. Since microservices are broken down into modules, understanding the functionality of a single module is easier for developers, and making changes to this element does not require rebuilding the entire algorithm.
• Improved stability. In case of any problem, it will affect only part of the application. This provides better performance for end-users and eliminates downtime while IT troubleshoots and restores service.

Is it worth it to remake existing monolithic applications into microservices or create new ones built from microservices from scratch? Despite its decreasing popularity, the monolith has strengths that, in many circumstances, operate better.

If you need to test some new idea, it’s better to begin with a monolith. With a small team of engineers whose task is to create a simple application, it is not necessary to use microservices. In this case, It will be much easier to create, modify, implement, and test a monolithic application.

The microservices management platform is more suitable for complex projects. It provides effective options for working with a complex system with various services and functions inside a single program. Microservices are an excellent choice for platforms that span multiple user operations and workflows. This approach is relevant when a business needs scalability, flexible development, frequent feature additions, and fast release cycles.

Microservices, containers, and clouds

Since we touched on the topic of compatibility, it must be emphasized that it was in combination with cloud technologies that microservice architecture, containerization, and DevOps principles could develop.

In a traditional architecture, if you need to increase capacity, you have to buy additional equipment or cut functionality in order for the servers to cope with the load. Cloud architecture allows you to quickly add a pool of resources for the desired period of time. The system rebuilds faster, which reduces the likelihood of failures due to equipment overload.

Microservice architecture becomes more reliable if you work in the multicloud format, that is, with several clouds. Even if one of the services fails, it will work from another cloud – the performance of the application will not suffer, and users will not notice anything.

In general, the combination of cloud and container solutions helps to develop a microservice approach, which allows companies to release more stable products in a shorter period of time.

Vital Shpakouski   Philologist with higher education, professional translator, former volunteer and teacher, entrepreneur, and salesperson with 13 years of experience. Now I’m a copywriter in Internet marketing, writing about everything that helps businesses grow and develop. In my free time, I create music and songs that no one hears and take photos and videos that no one sees.