Netflix, Amazon, Google, PayPal, and Facebook have more in common than them being the absolute behemoths of their niches. They all follow the microservices architecture along with DevOps.
These
giants of the digital world turn out to be built on the building block of
microservices. And they use DevOps guidelines to ensure things turn out to be
the way they are supposed to be (or perhaps need to be).
Principles
of DevOps put forward this great idea that all
the teams involved in the software development cycle should work in unison and
sync better. And microservices turn out to be one of the better strategies to
bring the idea to fruition.
Let’s throw some more light on the subject and find out how the microservices architecture can help you stay adhered to the lessons of DevOps playbook.
1. Microservices in DevOps – Smaller teams, better communication
There used to be vast communication gaps between development, production, and testing teams. It was only after one team was done with the code that the others got their hands on it, and no one ever seemed to know the other side of the story. DevOps came in with the agenda of bridging this gap using proper communication and encouraging everyone to work towards the common goal.
Microservices
do not require large teams with tons of members in every department. The
relatively smaller size of the microservice leads to smaller groups, and thus,
much better communication. Everybody knows everyone else, and also the
challenges faced by other members of the team.
When
Jeff Bezos came up with the idea of two-pizza
teams, the idea was to take down the lengthy
and tedious communication mechanisms. Smaller cross-functional teams do not
need to take much care of communication logs, and yet all of them understand
the needs and challenges of other members of the team, a lot better. And isn’t
it a great convenience if all it takes to keep the team happy is two pizzas? :)
2. Use what’s best for the job
Netflix
is one of the early birds to implement microservices architecture. They put
forward a great template as to how one should go about adopting it. And for the
benefits of microservices, Netflix itself is a living breathing example of what
one can achieve with them.
The
DevOps culture emphasizes creating the product with the end in mind. In the
waterfall way, each process is just a link in the long chain, and it will
usually have a lot to do with pre and post processes. It adds up to the
responsibilities of the caretakers of that process and adds up to the entropy.
Adrian
Cockroft, the then Director of Web Engineering and Cloud Architect at Netflix,
has explained the entire
process of Netflix implementing microservices
in great detail in many conferences. You can almost sense a feeling of relief
on his face when he describes how they didn’t need to worry much about the
programming language used to build a microservice. He explained that they were
okay with it as long as it worked well with their deployment mechanism. They
focused on the end product.
With
a microservices architecture in place, the teams will be able to use the best
possible resources needed for the job. They can make most of their decisions
with the end product in mind, something that will only improve the quality of
your software or service.
However,
you should also not get carried away with this freedom. Using multiple
languages can make things increasingly complicated if you don’t exercise proper
caution.
3. Better accountability
Let’s
suppose you have hundreds of developers in the company, and they all contribute
to a single piece of code- something that you usually see in a monolithic
architecture. You make the code go live, and let’s suppose something goes wrong
with it. What’d you do now? The first set of headaches would be to find out
what’s wrong, and then there will be the blame-game.
You
know the kind of ordeal we are talking about, and you might’ve gone through it
at some point. The DevOps principles propose eliminating this constant juggle of
responsibility. You don’t want to spend time determining if it was a fault of
the development team or the operations team. You’d rather channel all that
energy into eliminating the issue.
Microservices
architecture does a great job of making teams
responsible. You will not find the developers and testers going back and forth
on the problem but working together to make the product work. In the end, it
will be their collective responsibility if the software is working or not. And
you won’t be pulling your hair as it’s you who needs to make the service work
and find the epicenter of the problem at the same time.
4. Autonomy isn’t that bad
With
great power comes greater responsibility. And microservices architecture
doesn’t miss out on the “power” side of things. After all, it would be only
unfair of you bashing a team for a defect when you didn’t let them work the way
they would’ve preferred.
Microservices
provide a great deal of authority to teams. They don’t need to look up to the
authorities each time there is a crucial decision to be made. The team can
easily decide the next step when they come across a roadblock and make things
work.
When
we talk about cross-functional autonomous teams under DevOps, the motive is to
bring in all the flexibility needed in the project. And what better way to
introduce autonomy other than creating a vertical of sorts. A microservices
architecture allows teams to steer the ship in any direction, as long as they reach
the destination within the stipulated time and budget. And perhaps you can also
throw in a rule that they are not allowed to go on foreign waters. :P
5. Helps to create user-centric products
A
modern-day interpretation of Conway’s law would be that the end product ends up
reflecting the internal structure of the organization. If you want to come up
with products that do well on all the ends, then it should reflect in the
structure of the team creating the software.
The
microservices architecture allows you to reverse engineer Conway’s law and
start by building a team that can justify the aspirations of your end-user.
Recruiting a DevOps engineer doesn’t necessarily mean you are following its
principles. It’s more of a culture than anything. And that culture says you
need to continuously improve the processes and products with the end-user in
mind.
Microservices
give you a great start by allowing you to assemble a team and resources that
seem necessary. You can then modify them as needed. The fact that you can keep
on making changes without affecting much of the system helps too. Since a
microservice is relatively independent of other functions of the service, you
won’t have much difficulty introducing the changes. The cycle of continuous
improvement can keep on going until you have a satisfactory product for the
user.
6. Receptive to automation and testing
There
is a great deal of emphasis on continuous improvement and automating everything
that you can, under the principles of DevOps. Before the advent of
microservices, testing used to happen after the grueling software development
cycle. And just like other steps of the process in a monolithic architecture,
it used to consume a lot of time.
Microservices
breaks down the application stack into smaller and relatively independent
services. This smaller service is usually supposed to take care of only one
function. Therefore, unit testing ends up being a lot faster and easier to
automate.
It
is because of these microservices that we are now seeing multiple
micro-releases within a day. What used to take months is now taking weeks, and
what used to take hours now only needs a few seconds. And easier testing
and automation for microservices has a lot to
do with it. And one sweet byproduct of this increased frequency of testing and
release is much lower costs.
DevOps is this great
idea which sounds right to pretty much everyone. But when it comes to
implementation, people often find themselves in tricky situations. The
microservices architecture makes it a lot easier for one to stick to the
principles of DevOps.
Better
communication, more automation, and improved accountability are some of the
overlapping areas of DevOps and microservices. And for the rest of the virtues
of DevOps such as focus on the end product and continuous improvement, you can
rest assured that microservices is the perfect catalyst to propel you in that
direction.
We know that Microservices provide many benefits over monolithic architectures. They can remove single points of failure by ensuring issues in one service.
Well, thanks for such an informative blog. You can also go to Web Design Services in Cincinnati to know more about microservices.