Best Practices for Microservices

1 October, 2020 |

Microservices architecture, or simply microservices, is a distinctive method of mobile development and software systems that tries to focus on building single-function modules with well-defined interfaces and operations, which is why it is considered a trend that could benefit to many companies since it is oriented to provide services and is composed of freely coupled elements that have delimited contexts.

The term “freely coupled” means that you can update the services independently, this update does not require changing any other services. In fact, if you have a bunch of small and specialized services but to make a change to them you have to update them together, then it can’t be called microservices architecture as they are not flexibly coupled.

In other words, they are a granular architectural pattern that separates parts of an application into small independent services, furthermore, in mobile and software development it is an architectural style that structures an application as a collection of services that is constantly supported and checked weakly. independently docked and deployable.

In addition to being organized around business capabilities and their multiple benefits, it is believed that 90% of all new applications will have a microservices architecture to enhance the ability to design, debug, update, and leverage third-party code.

1) Create a separate data store for each microservice
First of all, don’t use the same data store for the backend when you want to implement it or transition to this type of architecture.
For this, it allows the team of each microservice to choose the database that best suits the service and that can be stored in a single data space, this allows the writing of different teams and that they can share database structures. data, thus reducing duplication of work.

Keeping data separate can make data management more complicated, because separate storage systems can fail or slow down at times of synchronization, becoming inconsistent and limiting scalability.

2) Keep the code at a similar level of maturity
This practice recommends keeping all the code at a similar level of maturity and stability, i.e. if you need to add or rewrite some of the code in this type of well-implemented architecture, the best approach is usually to create a new microservice for the new code or modified, leaving the existing microservice in place.

In this way, you can repeatedly implement and test the new code until it is error-free and as efficient as possible, with no risk of failure or performance degradation in the existing microservice, this process is known as the immutable infrastructure principle.
Thus, after verifying that this new microservice is as stable as the original, allowing them to merge again if they really perform a single function together, or if there are other efficiencies when combining them.

3) Make a separate compilation for each microservice
This is one of the best-recommended practices when designing such an architecture for mobile or software development, as it encourages a separate compilation for each microservice so that you can extract component files from the repository in the revision levels appropriate for him.

This sometimes leads to the situation where several of this type extract a similar set of files, but at different revision levels, that can make it more difficult to clean up the codebase by removing old versions of files (because you should check more carefully that a patch is no longer being used), but that’s an acceptable trade-off for how easy it is to add new files as you build new microservices.

4) Deploy in containers
Deploying microservices in containers is important because it means you only need one tool to implement it all.
As long as the microservice is in a container, the tool knows how to implement it, no matter what the container is.

5) Treat servers as interchangeable members
This practice recommends treating servers, particularly those running client-oriented code, as interchangeable members of a group.
That is, they all perform the same functions, so you don’t need to worry about them individually, your only concern is that they exist enough to produce the amount of work you need, and you can use the automatic scale to adjust the numbers up and down.
That way, if one stops working, it is automatically replaced by another.

6) Use ‘defense in depth’ to prioritize key services
After identifying which are your most sensitive services, you apply several different layers of security so that a potential attacker who can exploit one of their security layers still has to find a way to defeat all their other defenses in your critical services.

In general, this is easier said than done, but there are several resources available, the good news is that these types of architectures facilitate the adoption of this strategy in a very granular and strategic way, by focusing your security resources and efforts on microservices. specific, increasing the diversification of the security layers you want to adopt in each of them.

7) Use automatic security updates
Every time a part of your system is updated, you should make sure to detect any problems as soon as possible and in as much detail as possible.

To do this, implement this practice to ensure that your platform is mainly “atomic”, that is, everything must be wrapped in containers so testing your application with an updated library or a language version is just a matter of wrapping a different container All around you, so if the operation fails, reversing everything will be quite easy and, most importantly, it can be automated.

Conclusions
Unlike the monolith architecture, designing and implementing microservices correctly can be somewhat challenging and difficult, but since it provides a decentralized solution for different problems for mobile development and software development, defining the set of best practices it’s not only important but also crucial.

Thus, not only is a robust bulletproof system created, but a lot of disasters are prevented that could be highly counterproductive.
In itself, as a microservice is capable of encompassing central business capacity and at the same time adhering to fundamental design principles and objectives, it becomes a true digital asset, not only for mobile and software development but also because It is ideal to add value to the company, being able to use it successfully in multiple contexts and processes, both transactional and communicational.

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