For each other it becomes very complicated to handle the business workflow and managing data.
In order to make the software development task easier and manageable we implement a powerful approach known as micro services architecture. We break the entire software system into independent module or micro services. These can act as a separate and independent service module within an organization.
In this article we will understand the fundamentals of the Micro services Architecture, understand its advantages, best practices and learn how to implement it effectively with the help of Node.js.
Understanding Micro services Architecture
Micros services architecture is an approach in software development that allows developers to build application as a loosely coupled small and in dependant deployable services known as micro services.
Each micro services can be scaled to any business size and team composition independently and perform specific business functionality. Using Micro services architecture we can ensure continuous delivery, promote modularity and agility.
Key Characteristics of Micro services Architecture:
- Decomposition:
Large scale enterprise applications can be decomposed into smaller module with independent features. Each independent micro service can handle specific business operational tasks.
- Independence:
Business might have multiple services that are offered by different department within the organization. The teams working on specific micro services can work independently, manage the data, and generate user reports without being impacted with other micro services.
- Polyglotism:
We can build micro services with different programming languages, frameworks and development tools enabling development teams to select the right tools or frameworks for developing robust scalable and secure micros service architecture.
- Scalability:
Micro services Architecture can be scaled up to any business size and team composition based on demand resulting in better resource utilization and performance.
- Resilience:
When there is some bug in one service then other services remain un-impacted. This solves the problem of disruption of overall system if they were building in single modular structure.
Benefits of Micro services Architecture:
- Scalability and Flexibility:
When an organization make profit business owners might want to grow and expand their business in multiple locations. For this they need to scale up their IT infrastructure as per unique business needs. Using Micro service business owners can select the team size and composition conveniently for specific independent department within the organization.
- Improved Agility and Time-to-Market:
Decoupling services from each other facilitate the completion development process, promotes agility and faster time to market.
- Enhanced Fault Isolation and Resilience:
Isolation of other services from fault is essential in Micro service architecture. Since each smaller module within the software act as an independent micro service it helps in improving resilience and reliability of the enterprise application.
- Technology Diversity:
There are lots of programming language methodology, development and deployment tools that developers can utilize for fostering innovation and experimentation.
- Ease of Maintenance:
In micro service architecture, bug detection, error identification, and troubleshooting become easier. Support and maintenance team can conduct assessment for individual services without having to test the entire application.
Challenges of Micro services Architecture:
- Complexity:
The deployment task, monitoring performance of each micro service, and containerization becomes complicated in micro service architecture.
- Inter-service Communication:
It is essential that effective communication between the different services are crucial however in case where data flows from one micro service to another this tasks becomes difficult, time consuming and challenging.
- Data Management:
Organization with multiple hierarchy and complicated IT infrastructure data management can be complex especially in distributed environment as we see in micro service architecture.
- Operational Overhead:
DevOps practices, real time monitoring and optimization becomes difficult in micro service based applications as they are loosely coupled with each other and can have severe impact in long run. This can increase the operational overhead costs as well.
- Service Discovery and Load Balancing:
Balancing the load on the server requests is essential for businesses in modern times. Dynamic service discovery and load balancing cannot be done effectively in micro service architecture.
Implementing Micro services Architecture with Node.js
NodeJS was developed and launched by the company named Joyent (now Node.js Foundation) in the year 2009 as popular framework that has cross platform abilities and open source java script run time environment.
Here are few things to keep in mind before implementing Micro service architecture with Node.js
- Choose the Right Frameworks:
Selection of the right framework is crucial and important before handling any micro service project for businesses. This helps in delivering the micro service project exactly as the clients need and helps in maintaining the scalability of the organization and enhancing productivity of developers.
- Leverage npm Ecosystem:
Node js package manager also known as NPM allows us to implement common features in micro service modules, authentication and message queuing.
- Design for Asynchronous Communication:
The communications between the different micro services can be done asynchronously with the messaging protocols like HTTP, web socket, message brokers like Rabbit or Kafka.
- Implement Circuit Breaker Pattern:
In a micro service we can handle failure in the application gracefully without affecting the other micro service because of distributed environment.
- Monitor and Debug Effectively:
Monitor and Debug Effectively: Third party Monitoring and logging tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and ELK stack can help us check the health, performance, and logs on real-time basis and are efficient in identification of bug and resolution of the issues.
To sum up we must say that Micro service architecture offers many benefits to businesses. It helps in performing the different business activity simultaneously without being interrupted.
Distributed systems in Microservice architecture enable us to test the application service wise independently. Node js development services help to build scalable, secure and robust micro service architecture as per unique business requirements.