Benefits of Kubernetes for Microservices Architecture

“Microservice Architecture is described as a particular way of designing software applications as suites of independently deployable services.”
— Martin Fowler

Microservices is the state-of-the-art software development technique that structures an application as an assortment of loosely coupled services. Each service is self-contained and should implement a single business capability. Microservice architecture is intended to overcome the hurdles, failure, and breakdown of the bigger applications and thereby increase the modularity aspect. It is considered apt for enterprise software development.

“Micro-service architecture provides a range of technical benefits that contribute to the development velocity and product quality in software projects, while also contributing to the overall business agility.”
— Mark Emeis, Senior Director of Software Technologies, CA Technologies.

Microservices provides probabilities to add suppleness to the system so that components can handle spikes and errors graciously. With this, every stakeholder can focus exclusively on one element of an overall application, with their own programming style without bothering about other components.

For being successful in the Microservices journey, here are certain requirements that need to be ascertained:

Just the way Microservices does, containers have also been garnering increased popularity as an indispensable ingredient to modernized architecture. Both – microservices and containers are reliable, scalable and offer a nice concept that isolates the essential component of your web services. Microservices and containers are almost inseparable and act as a catalyst to each other.

To adhere to all the above needs of a Microservices architecture, the one technology that is apt is — the popular container management platform. Popular, effective, scalable, robust and simplistic — it has its own user community to boast of. Kubernetes, along with the support of some other widespread tools and technologies can be of great help for setting up and managing a Microservices architecture.

Of course, embracing the DevOps method of working is highly important, significant and well needed for the technologies to work at their best. After all, Kubernetes and DevOps are considered the power couple of the cloud. Hence, opting for the Kubernetes workflow can streamline the build/test/deploy pipelines in DevOps.

By the year 2020, more than 50% of companies will use container technology, up from less than 20% in 2017.

Kubernetes — An Overview

• Prolific, machine-agnostic concepts for development and IT teams.
• Provides the software necessary to build and deploy reliable and scalable distributed systems.
• A modern-day, future proof architecture.
• Revolution in distributed systems and large-scale app development.
• A robust and reachable architecture.
• Augments the efficiency level of developers to a great extent.

The Different Components Involved In Kubernetes

• Pods – Cluster of containers that can group other container images in a single unit.
• NameSpaces – Offers isolation and complete access control for individual microservice.
• Kubernetes Services – Offers load balancing, naming and discovery isolation.
• Ingress – Object that offers a simplistic front-end.

The one big reason Kubernetes was able to prove its worth for Microservices was that it could easily segregate configuration from the orchestration. Since Kubernetes had a history of coming up from Google’s ‘Borg’ project, there was a certain extent of sophistication it brought along. Kubernetes works natively with microservices, and is a good way to deploy basic, and even more complex microservices architectures without too much of a hassle.

How Can Kubernetes Prove Pertinent For An Effective Microservices Architecture?

• For an effective Microservices architecture, you would need an automated CI/CD procedure and artifact registries. Kubernetes can assist very well in running and managing this. Of course, there needs to be certain computing resources and a standardized operating infrastructure managed by a service cloud provider.
• With the help of other specialized software like Jenkins and Docker, Kubernetes can assist in managing disparate isolated settings, resources, storage distributions, etc. Docker has started supporting and shipping Kubernetes from its CE (community edition) and EE (enterprise edition) releases.
• It can help in performing deployments and rollbacks with automatic scheduling, service detection, and load balancing.
• Maintaining resilience and fault tolerance becomes easier and effective with Kubernetes.
• The resiliency structure of Kubernetes can be joint with other tools like Docker for implementing containers.
• With this, Kubernetes can be of great assistance in dealing with app configurations and executing centralized logging systems, metrics gathering and tracing, etc.
• Kubernetes can assist in executing stateful services, scheduled jobs and batch jobs with ease and efficiency.
• Based on the type of Microservices, there could be certain definite requirements like API management solution for API based Microservices.
• Getting almost all activities done under one roof provides a lot of innovative time for the users to try their hands-on newer things like auto replication, auto-scaling, etc.

As We Wrap Up

It is thought-provoking to see how the microservices architecture offered so much impetus to the acceptance of container technologies such as Kubernetes. While originally, it was the microservices way of working driving these technologies onwards, now it is Kubernetes defining the microservices architecture philosophies and procedures.

Using microservices is more like a journey rather than a destination. As you keep using it, there are frequent changes that occur in the way you develop software, which turns out to be creative, lucrative and effective for the project. Kubernetes, with its key features, has been competent enough to bring out the best in the microservices architecture. Wait and watch till Kubernetes and Microservices serve as the face of the future for enterprises. Not a long wait for sure!

Further Reading

DZone Refcard: Advanced Kubernetes

How Kubernetes Works

A Complete Introduction to Kubernetes