Microservices architecture is a way to build software that sets up an application as a group of small, independent services that are only loosely connected to each other. Each service is responsible for a specific task, and they communicate with each other through APIs. Microservices architecture provides several benefits, such as scalability, resilience, and flexibility.
But it can be hard to deploy and manage an application that is built on microservices, especially when there are hundreds or thousands of microservices to manage.
Kubernetes is a great platform for deploying and managing microservices because it has a number of features that make it easy to use. In this blog, we will discuss how Kubernetes can change the way microservices are deployed and managed.
What is Kubernetes?
According to the 2020 CNCF Survey, Kubernetes adoption continues to rise, with 78% of respondents using it in production, up from 58% in 2018. The survey also found that 40% of respondents are using K8s to deploy microservices.
Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration platform that makes it easy to deploy, scale, and manage applications that run in containers. It gives you a platform for managing the whole lifecycle of a containerized application, from deployment to scaling, monitoring, and recovery from failure. It is designed to work with a variety of container runtimes, such as Docker, containerd, and CRI-O. It is highly extensible and provides a rich set of APIs that can be used to customize and automate various aspects of the platform.
Let's learn how Kubernetes or K8s is easing out the way microservices are deployed.
Container Orchestration
Kubernetes is designed to work with containerized applications, which is the preferred way to deploy microservices. Containers offer a way to package an application and all of its dependencies that is light and easy to move around.
It is a platform for managing the whole lifecycle of containers, from setting them up to scaling, monitoring, and fixing problems when they happen. It can deploy and manage thousands of containers across multiple nodes, which makes it a great platform for deploying microservices.
Simplified Deployment
One of the best things about Kubernetes is that it makes it easier to set up and run microservices. With Kubernetes, you can define your application's infrastructure as code using YAML or JSON files. This makes it easy to deploy and manage multiple microservices across different environments.
For example, let's say you have a microservices-based application consisting of several services, such as a front-end service, a back-end service, and a database service. You can define the deployment and service manifests for each service in a YAML file, which describes the desired state of the application. Kubernetes will then automatically deploy and manage the services based on these manifests.
Improved Scalability
Scalability is one of the key benefits of the microservices architecture. With Kubernetes, you can easily scale your microservices horizontally or vertically. Horizontal scaling involves adding more instances of a service, while vertical scaling involves increasing the resources allocated to a service.
Kubernetes makes it easy to scale microservices up or down based on demand. For example, if your front-end service is experiencing high traffic, it can automatically add more instances of the service to handle the load. Once the traffic subsides, it can scale down the service to reduce resource consumption.
Health Checks and Self-Healing In a microservices architecture, services can fail at any time. Kubernetes provides a health-check mechanism that continuously monitors the health of the containers and services. If a container or service fails, Kubernetes can automatically restart it or replace it with a new instance.
Efficient Resource Management
In a microservices architecture, it's important to manage resources well so they don't get wasted and cause problems with performance. Kubernetes can help with this by providing resource allocation and management features.
For example, it can give CPU and memory to each microservice based on what it needs. It can also restrict the amount of resources that each microservice can use, ensuring that no service consumes all available resources. This can help optimize the performance of the entire system.
Automated Service Discovery and Load Balancing
Microservices architecture involves a large number of services that need to communicate with each other. Kubernetes provides automated service discovery and load balancing features, which simplify the process of communication between services.
It has a built-in way for services to find each other. They can do this by using DNS or environment variables. It also has a built-in load-balancing system that sends traffic to different copies of a service.
For example, when a new service is deployed in Kubernetes, it's automatically registered with the it’s API server, which maintains a list of all services in the cluster. Other services can then use this list to discover and communicate with the new service.
Continuous Deployment and Integration
K8s provides robust support for continuous deployment and integration. This makes it easy to automate the process of deploying and updating microservices.
Kubernetes, for instance, can get updated container images from a container registry and automatically deploy them to the cluster. It can also do “rolling updates,” in which microservices are updated one at a time. This keeps the application running while the updates are being made.
Rolling Updates Deploying updates to a microservices-based application can be challenging. Kubernetes has a feature called "rolling updates" that lets updates be put in place gradually, reducing downtime and the chance of failure. It can also roll back to the previous version if there are any issues with the new version.
Conclusion
By using Kubernetes, you can focus on building your microservices-based apps without having to worry about how to manage and deploy them. It has become the de facto standard for deploying containerized applications, including microservices. Its flexible and extensible architecture provides a platform to manage the entire lifecycle of containerized applications, from deployment to scaling, monitoring, and failure recovery.
As microservices architecture becomes more popular, Kubernetes is likely to play a big role in the future of software development and deployment. Before you head out, we would highly appreciate if you could spare a few seconds to let us know your preferred container orchestration tool!
Which container orchestration tool would you prefer?
- 0%Kubernetes
- 0%Docker Swarm
- 0%Mesos
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HyperTest is an API test automation platform that helps teams generate and run integration tests for their microservices without ever writing a single line of code. It can use your application traffic to build integration tests in hours or days what can take teams months if not years to build.
Not just that this builds very high coverage without effort, it by design makes it impossible for teams to introduce a breaking change or failure in your apps that is not first reported by HyperTest.