Best Practices for Developing Microservices Architecture

A microservice architecture splits an application component into small, independent services. This enables you to develop, deploy, and scale a service independently. Today, enterprises such as Uber, Netflix, Spotify, and Etsy employ microservice development owing to its maintainability, flexibility, and ease of development. 

However, adopting microservices architecture software development also comes with its own set of challenges. Some of these are an increase in the complexity of operations and difficulty in maintaining consistency, security, and testing.  

This blog covers the best practices to overcome the challenges you face while developing microservice architecture.  

This blog covers;  

• Introduction to Microservice Architecture 
• Example: How Netflix Reduced Cost Using Microservice Architecture 
• Best Practices of Microservices Development 
• Beyond the Basics: Additional Microservices Best Practices 
• FAQ 

Introduction to Microservice Architecture

A microservice is an architectural style that allows you to break down a large application into small, interdependent services. Developers develop these independent services separately and combine them to form an application. When a user request is made, the application calls many microservices to compose its response. 

For example, when a user makes a purchase request, the application will call the User Service to authenticate the user, the Product Service to fetch product details, the Order Service to create an order, and the Payment Service to process the payment.  

These loosely coupled services interact via well-defined, lightweight APIs to meet business requirements.  

Let us understand how microservices architecture software development can benefit businesses with a real-life example. 

Example: How Netflix Reduced Cost Using Microservice Architecture

In 2008, Netflix faced challenges such as scaling issues and service outages. Due to this, their primary database was corrupted, resulting in a day-long stoppage in DVD shipping services. So, Netflix decided to start migrating to microservice architecture. They began shifting their non-user-facing movie-coding platform to operate on the AWS (Amazon Web Services) cloud. After that, they shifted their user-facing systems to microservices, which was completed in 2012. 

After adopting microservice architecture, they overcame their existing issues and reduced costs substantially. Until now, Netflix can handle its growing users (210 million worldwide) without facing any operational challenges, thanks to its decision to adopt microservice architecture.

Also Read: Benefits of Cloud Computing for Your Business. 

Best Practices of Microservices Development 

Utilize Domain-Driven Design(DDD) for Enhanced Productivity 

A Domain-driven design means aligning the software's design with the domain's structure and behavior. The domain here refers to the subject area which the software is built to address. For example, if you are building a banking application, the domain areas will be accounting, customers, transactions, and regulations. 

Thus, DDD shows a strategic perspective on software development by focusing on the domain. It helps minutely analyze a domain by breaking it into more digestible subdomains.  

You can then quickly transform these subdomains into microservices. This way, each microservices will have a clear purpose and responsibility. 

The DDD model has two phases: Strategic and tactical. The strategic phase ensures that your architecture remains focused on business capabilities. The tactical phase provides different design models to create a domain model. Tactical patterns include entities, aggregates, and domain services to help you design loosely coupled and cohesive microservices. 

Adapt the Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) for Quick Response 

According to the single responsibility principle, object-oriented programming objects should be made for a specific function. Like code, each class also possesses a single reason to change. This makes software more maintainable and easier to understand.  

To implement SPR, you must make sure each class has predefined responsibilities and that they are not trying to do too many things. As the quote goes, “Gather together those things that change for the same reason and separate those things that change for different reasons.”

Some benefits of SRP include reduced dependencies, as each class performs specific tasks, and reduced response times, as no service is dependent on other services to respond to user requests.

Let us understand this Principle with an example: 

E.g., An e-commerce platform will have a separate microservices architecture for product catalog, carts, wish lists, user logins, payment processing, etc. All these services will have a single responsibility. As per this principle, you must not integrate one service with another if it is not necessary. This way, you can avoid making the architecture complicated to test. 

Decouple Microservice Data to Reduce Latency 

According to this concept, each microservice must have a separate database. Each microservice must act as an autonomous entity and implement its functionality individually. This ensures that even if a single microservice fails, it will not affect the other microservices. 

Unlike monolithic architecture, multiple services do not need to have the same database. You can use an API to enable a microservice to fetch data from another. This allows each microservice to manage its logging and caching mechanism without affecting other microservices. 

To implement this concept, you can use solutions like the Saga pattern, API composition, and CQRS (Composition Query Responsibility Segregation). 

•  API composition: This allows task coordination by allowing multiple microservices to communicate (via API). It also enables the implementation of complex transactions and queries across multiple microservices. 
• Command Query Responsibility Segregation (CQRS) pattern: This pattern differentiates the read and write operations for data, allowing for better management of complex data models. This can help improve the system's performance and scalability. 
• SAGA Pattern: In this pattern, you can split complex transactions in microservices into smaller, coordinated steps. Thus, ensuring data consistency and error handling for each service involved. 

Leverage Asynchronous Communication for Resilience  

You can set up communication in two ways in a microservice architecture. Let us understand them by an example. Imagine a ride-sharing app that uses microservices. When a user books a ride, synchronous communication takes place.  

Thus, the user must complete a series of steps without interruption:  

Choosing pickup and drop-off locations ➡️ Confirming the driver ➡️ calculating the fare➡️ Processing the payment.  

The user needs to wait for each step to finish before moving to the next, and finally, they receive a message saying, "Your ride is confirmed, and the driver will arrive in 5 minutes." 

After the ride is confirmed, asynchronous communication happens in the background. The app notifies the driver about the new ride request, updates the driver's status to show they are on a trip, sends the ride details to the user's app, and logs the trip information for future analysis.  

These background tasks do not depend on each other and can be completed at different times. 

Thus, in synchronous communication, each step depends on the previous one, which can take longer. In asynchronous communication, tasks run independently, making the system more efficient. The app can reduce delays and improve performance by using more asynchronous communication. 

Asynchronous communication is a better option in a microservice setup. Because it allows for greater resilience and autonomy for each microservice. It does not rely on other microservices for the initial service's HTTP request/response operation. 

Containerize Microservices to improve Portability and Scalability. 

Containerization means deploying microservices by bundling them with their codebase, libraries, and  

files (which are needed to run them). Thus, you can deploy microservices consistently across various computing models. Containers are more portable and efficient than virtual machines. This makes it easy for you to scale and improve portability. 

A Container deployment process includes   

• Building (a container image),  
• Deploying it (in a computing environment) and  
• Managing it (using a containerization platform) 

Extend Microservices to the Front-end with Micro Frontends  

This concept extends the capabilities of microservices development services to the front end. You can break down the user interface into small, independent features and bundle them together to create a single front-end application. 

This makes the development process faster as each team works on one business domain.  

IKEA and Spotify have implemented this concept in their new and old code bases, which gives them the leverage to respond more quickly to market changes.  

Also, with micro frontends, you don't have to rely on complex APIs. Instead, the small parts can use simple browser events, which are easier to manage. Micro frontends also speed up continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) processes by providing quicker feedback during development. This means you can build a frontend that is both flexible and scalable.  

Adopt The DevSecOps model for Security. 

Cloud-native applications utilize microservice architecture, which has made security a crucial element. This requires implementing robust security practices throughout development. DevSecOps enables this by ensuring continuous delivery and integration and handling security issues. It ensures that the deployment, development, and production phases are secure.  

Combining microservices with DevSecOps in the software development process has many benefits. Some of these benefits are  

• Low chances of error 
• Reduction in development costs and efforts 
• More secure development 
• Better product quality 
• Enhanced team productivity 

Thus, combining these two strategies can help you enhance the performance of your software while maintaining its scalability.

Orchestrating Microservices 

Imagine a band as an application and musicians as microservices forming that application. Now, what if the musicians are not coordinated? The result will be unpleasant music. Similarly, the end application will not work harmoniously if the microservices are not coordinated. Orchestration in microservices is like a conductor that ensures microservices work harmoniously when brought together. 

Using a microservice orchestration tool is better than using Docker to run containers on a VM. An orchestration tool offers better resilience. Some proven orchestration platforms are Kubernetes, Azure Kubernetes, Amazon Elastic container services, and Azure container Apps. 

Proactive Monitoring and Maintenance 

If you migrate from a monolithic architecture to microservices development services, the complexity and need for maintenance increase. You must constantly check if all microservices are functioning as required and use resources efficiently. You also need to monitor the ongoing changes to resource allocation.  

You can adopt a Black Box approach for the same. The Black Box approach sets service latency and error rates as the key metrics. Performance testing, security, and historical data analysis are essential monitoring parts. You can use tools like JMeter or Gatling to identify issues and optimize the system's performance. 

You can also leverage AI-enabled tools like Instana and Dynatrace for better observability, intelligent insights, and proactive problem-solving 

Avoid Hardcoding for Flexible and Adaptable Microservices 

This rule states that hard coding in microservice architecture should be avoided. Hardcoding means writing specific, fixed values directly into the code. Let's use an example to understand why: 

Imagine you have an e-commerce app. When the customer places an order, the customer service needs to communicate with the shipping service to handle the delivery. In a traditional approach, the developers might hardcode the address or location of the shipping service directly into the customer service code.  

Thus, if the network configuration or location of the shipping service changes, the customer service code must be updated to reflect that change. To avoid this issue, a better approach is to use a network discovery mechanism, like a proxy or service registry. 

This allows customer service to dynamically discover the shipping service's location instead of having it hard coded. 

Choose the Right Tools & Technologies  

In microservices development services, each service is independent of the others. So, you can use different technologies to develop various services. Selecting the right technology or language is crucial for achieving better results from microservice architecture.

However, as so many technologies are available, selecting the right one can be challenging. You can consider factors like scalability, maintainability, cost of architecture, ease of deployment, and fault tolerance to choose the right one.  

However, this may take a lot of time and effort, so here is the go-to list of tools that cover all these factors. 

• Programming Languages Spring Boot and Spring Cloud (Java), Express.js (Node.js), Quarkus (Java)  
• Containers and Orchestration Linux containers, Kubernetes, Mesos  
• API Management and Testing API Fortress, Kong, Postman 
• Monitoring and Observability Jaeger, Logstash, Graylog 
• Deployment Jenkins and Bamboo 
• DevSecOps To smoothly manage the entire software development life cycle 

Beyond the Basics: Additional Microservices Best Practices 

These are the 11 most common microservices best practices to help you build and maintain a microservice architecture efficiently. However, the list doesn’t end here. There are more such practices that you can consider. 

• Loose Coupling: Ensuring microservices have minimal knowledge of each other reduces dependencies.  
• High Cohesion: Designing microservices to encapsulate all related data and functionality together.  
• Dedicated Teams: Assigning separate teams to own and develop individual microservices enables faster delivery. 

Remember, the best practices may differ depending on your business type and the goal you aim to achieve. Thoroughly consider all the factors before deciding which practices are best for you.  

If you need help migrating from a monolithic to a microservices development service or want to speed up the process, our microservices development services can help.