Micro Services Architecture: A Comprehensive Guide
What is Micro Services?
In the realm of software development, micro services have emerged as a popular architectural approach that enables the creation of complex applications by splitting them into smaller, independent services. This approach allows for faster development, enhanced expandability, and agility, making it an attractive choice for developers and organizations alike.
The Rise of Micro Services
The adoption of micro services has gained momentum in recent years, with many Internet giants and open-source communities embracing this approach. Alibaba, Tencent, 360, Jingdong, 58 city, and other Internet companies have successfully implemented micro services in their applications. The current framework for micro services development is vast, with popular options including Dubbo, SpringCloud, thrift, and grpc.
Defining Micro Services
So, what exactly are micro services? A micro service is a small, independent module that is responsible for a specific function or task. These modules can be deployed independently, isolated from each other, and can be scaled up or down as needed. Each micro service exposes its functionality through a lightweight protocol, such as HTTP and JSON, allowing other services to communicate with it.
The Benefits of Micro Services
The micro services approach brings numerous benefits, including:
- Faster online time
- Flexibility
- Elasticity
- Consistency
- Relatively lower cost
- Development efficiency
- Lower communication costs
- Faster response
- Shorter iteration cycle
Challenges of Micro Services
Despite the benefits, micro services also present several challenges, including:
- Distributed transaction service invocation issues
- Testing, deployment, and monitoring of multiple micro services
- Locating and resolving issues in a distributed environment
Distributed Transaction Solutions
To address the challenges of micro services, we need to explore distributed transaction solutions. Alibaba’s GTS (Global Transaction Service) is a new generation of micro services that solves the problem of distributed transactions. GTS provides a whole new level of reliability and consistency for micro services.
Why Micro Services?
So, why choose micro services? The answer lies in the evolution of service architecture. With the development of the Internet, web applications have grown in scale, leading to challenges such as code repetition, excessive dependence on modules, and high maintenance costs. Micro services offer a solution to these challenges by providing a flexible, scalable, and maintainable architecture.
Split Single Architecture
To apply micro services, we need to split our single architecture into multiple dimensions:
- X-axis: replication, where multiple web servers are used to increase load balancing and distributed deployment
- Z-axis: database expansion, where sub-libraries and sub-tables are used to distribute data across multiple database servers
- Y-axis: functional decomposition, where different services are decomposed into separate modules
Service Management
Service governance relies on underlying technical support, requiring a strong foundation of technical knowledge. This includes building micro-bus services and communication mechanisms, such as service registration, discovery, and calls.
Dubbo Framework
Dubbo is an open-source framework that provides a micro services architecture. It uses various registration centers, such as Zookeeper, to achieve provider services and provides service discovery functionality. Dubbo supports RPC remote service calls and RESTAPI invocations.
Asynchronous Communication
Authentic micro services architecture relies on asynchronous communication, where services dependent on each other do not wait for each other, resulting in a slow response speed. This approach ensures that if a service fails, it will not affect other services.
Load Balancing
ConfigServer is a principle provided by Dubbo that ensures the reliability of micro load balancing service systems. It collects and updates information for each Client Server for each service provided.
Automated Test and Operation
Micro services require automated testing and operation to ensure efficient iteration. This includes automated operation and maintenance, which is an essential step to enhance delivery speed.
Monitoring
Monitoring is crucial for micro services, including hardware environment, service status, system health, and real-time alerts. Monitoring the implementation of micro services will be important to what extent?
Conclusion
Micro services are not a silver bullet, and they bring numerous benefits but also introduce several challenges. Before engaging in micro architecture, we need to consider the challenges and think critically about our approach.