Understanding microservices

Microservices are both an architecture and an approach to writing software. With microservices, applications are broken down into their smallest components, independent from each other. Instead of a traditional, monolithic, approach to apps, where everything is built into a single piece, microservices are all separated and work together to accomplish the same tasks. Each of these components, or processes, is a microservice. This approach to software development values granularity, being lightweight, and the ability to share similar process across multiple apps. It is a major component of optimizing application development towards a cloud-native model.

But the bigger question here is why you'd want to use a microservice-based infrastructure. The goal is, simply put, to deliver quality software, faster. Using microservices is a means to that end, but there are other considerations too. Breaking your apps into microservices isn’t enough, you've got to manage them, orchestrate them, and deal with the data they create and modify.

Compared to monolithic apps, microservices are easier to build, test, deploy, and update. That means your business can react faster to new demands, rather than getting stuck in the multiyear “death march” of traditional software development. Now, different parts of your development team can work concurrently on your products, in an agile manner, and deliver value to your customers immediately.

Learn the basics behind microservices, the pros and cons of using them, and check out our on-demand training to learn about building a microservices-based architecture.

In order for a microservices architecture to work as a functional application, services need to request data from other services all the time. But what if some services get overloaded with requests? This is where a service mesh comes in—it routes requests from one service to the next, optimizing how all the moving parts work together.

Basically, a service mesh is a way to control how different microservices share data with one another. Unlike other systems for managing interservice communication, a service mesh is a dedicated infrastructure layer built right into an app. This visible infrastructure layer can document how well (or not) different parts of an app interact, so it becomes easier to optimize communication and avoid downtime as an app grows

Linux containers give your microservice-based apps an ideal application deployment unit and self-contained execution environment. With microservices in containers, it’s easier to take advantage of hardware and easily orchestrate services, including storage, networking, and security.

It’s why the Cloud Native Computing Foundation says microservices and containers together are the foundation for cloud-native application development. This model enables faster development and makes it easier to transform and optimize existing applications—and it starts with microservices in containers.