Sample MIS603 Microservices Architecture Report 2

MIS603 Microservices Architecture Report 2 Sample

Assessment Task

This proposal should be approximately 1500 words (+/- 10%) excluding cover page, references and appendix. This proposal must be typed and clearly set out (presented professionally). You need to pay special attention to principles and key concepts of Microservices Architecture (MSA), service design and DevOps. The purpose of this assessment is to give you an opportunity to contextualise and convey to learning facilitator relevant knowledge based on “real-world” application. Particularly, the aim of this assessment is to enhance your employability skills through providing hands-on education and opportunities to practice real life experience. As a result, this assessment item is developed not only to evaluate your understanding of MSA application, but also to assist you practicing and improving your research skills. In doing so, this assessment will formatively develops the knowledge required for you to complete Assessment 3 successfully.

Context

MSA have been getting more and more popular over the last year, and several organisations are migrating monolithic applications to MSA. A MSA consists of a collection of small, autonomous services that each service is a separate codebase, which can be managed by a small development team. A team can update an existing service without rebuilding and redeploying the entire application.

Services are responsible for persisting their own data or external state. This differs from the traditional model, where a separate data layer handles data persistence. More recently, with the development of cloud computing, new ways of software development have evolved with MSA recognised as a cloud-native software development approach. As a professional, your role will require that you understand the principles of software development, especially in the field of cloud-based platforms, which are rapidly becoming the preferred hosting solution for many organisations. Having a working understanding of these concepts will enable you to fulfil many roles and functions, and be informed as to what factors influence decision making when software development architecture has been selected. Whilst you may not be a developer, it will enable you to have meaningful conversations about the principles of MSA and why certain decisions may be made in a certain way. This will support you to manage the bridge between IT and the business.

Instructions

You are expected to address the following steps to fulfil this assessment task:

1. From the list below, select an organisation that you are familiar with and / or have enough data and information. Here are list of organisations using microservices:

o Comcast Cable
o Uber
o Hailo
o Netflix
o Zalando
o Amazon
o Twitter
o PayPal
o Ebay
o Sound Cloud
o Groupon
o Gilt

2. Discuss how MSA has transformed or revolutionised the operations of the organisation. Identify and analyse at least three business or organisational reasons for justifying your discussion.

3. Develop a business proposal to introduce the selected organisation, justify why you choose it and why microroservices is the best architecture in the selected organisation.

The report should consist of the following structure:

A title page with subject code and name, assignment title, student’s name, student number, and lecturer’s name.

The introduction (200–250 words) that will also serve as your statement of purpose for the proposal— this means that you will tell the reader what you are going to cover in your proposal. You will need to inform the reader of:

a) Your area of research and its context

b) The key elements you will be addressing

c) What the reader can expect to find in the body of the report.

The body of the report (1000–1100 words) you are required to research and write a proposal focused on organisation using MSA as a software development philosophy. However, you are strongly advised to do some research regarding MSA in a “real-world” application.

The conclusion (200–250 words) will summarise any findings or recommendations that the report puts forward regarding the concepts covered in the report.

Format of the report

The report should use font Arial or Calibri 11 point, be line spaced at 1.5 for ease of reading, and have page numbers on the bottom of each page. If diagrams or tables are used, due attention should be given to pagination to avoid loss of meaning and continuity by unnecessarily splitting information over two pages. Diagrams must carry the appropriate captioning.

Solution

Introduction

Microservices architecture has started gaining popularity in the past few years as displayed with the migration of the monolithic applications towards its adoption. It stands to encompass a collection of small and autonomous services wherein each of the service consists of a separate codebase that possesses the feature of being managed by a compact development team. For Assignment Help, A unique benefit of the element corresponds with the fact that the development team can update the existing service in the absence of the need of rebuilding or redeploying of the entire application (Li et al., 2020).With the recent advancements in the aspects of cloud computing, and the new and innovative manner of software development, microservices architecture has acquired recognition as a cloud-native method for software development (Aderaldo et al., 2017).

The report is concerned with the discussion of the manner in which microservices architecture has led to substantial transformation and revolutionization of the operations of the selected company, Uber. In the same context, it identifies and analyses the organisations reasons for the justification of the shift of Uber from the monolithic architecture to the microservice system by assessing the issues that led Uber to make the decision. As such, the report intends to develop a business proposal that would be introduced to the selected organisation in line with the recognition of microservices as the best architecture by laying an emphasis on the benefits that it brings to Uber.

Discussion

An adoption of the aspect of microservices architecture is becoming a popular solution to large and complex issues in the context of IT systems owing to the fact that is entails a technique for the development of applications in the form of small services wherein each of the service is tasked with one function akin to product search, shipment, payment. Such services communicate with one another with the application of API gateways. A number of international companies such as Amazon or Netflix has displayed a transition from monolith to microservices, thus, clarifying its relevance and usability. Similar to many start-ups, the company Uber initiated its operations in line with monolithic architecture in order to cater to a single offering in one particular location. The choice had been justified at that tome with all the operations transpiring under the UberBLACK option based in San Francisco (Haddad, 2019). The presence of a single codebase had proven to be sufficient for the resolution of the business concerns for the company, which remained inclusive of connecting drivers with the riders, billing as well as payments. As such, it was reasonable to confine the business logic of the company in one particular location. Nevertheless, with the rapid expansion of Uber into a greater number of citizens, accompanied by the introduction of new products, such a nature of operations needed to undergo considerable variations or a complete change.

Consequently, the growth the core domain models and the introduction of new features led to an outcome wherein the components of the company became tightly coupled, thus, resulting in an enforcement of the encapsulation which increased the difficulty of separation. Furthermore, the continual integration proved to be a liability owing to the fact that the deployment of the codebase corresponded with the deployment of all the services at once. This meant a greater amount of pressure for the engineering team who had to handle more requests as well as the significant increase in the developer activity, irrespective of the rapid growth and scaling of the said engineering team (Haddad, 2019). Moreover, the continual need for the addition of new features, resolution of bugs and fixing the technical debt within a single repo developed as significant challenges. In the same context, the expansion of the system, on the basis of a monolithic architecture, resulted in issues for the company in line with scalability as well as persisting integration (Torvekar & Game, 2019).

Additionally, a single change in the system became a huge responsibility for the developers in view of the dependencies of the components of the app of Uber.The monolithic structure of Uber entailed a connection between the passengers and drivers with the aid of the REST API (Hillpot, 2021). It also possessed three adapters that contained embedded API to serve the aforementioned purposes of pilling, payment and text messages. Furthermore, the system involved a MySQL database with all the features being contained in the monolith (Hillpot, 2021). In other words, the primary reasons for the decision of Uber to transition to microservices architecture corresponded with the following factors (Gluck, 2020):

- The deployments were expensive and time consuming, in addition to necessitating frequent rollbacks.

- The maintenance of good separations of concerns in relation to the huge codebase proved challenging since expediency, in an exponential growth environment, results in poor boundaries between components and logic.

- The combined issues provided challenges for the execution of the system in an autonomous or independent manner.

As such, Uber opted for the hypergrowth of other successful companies such as Amazon, Netflix or Twitter, with the aim of breaking the monolith into multiple codebases such that a service oriented architecture could be developed. To be specific, the company opted for the adoption of microservices architecture. The migration from the monolithic codebase to microservices architecture enabled the company to resolve a number of concerns. Accordingly, the introduction of the new architecture was accompanied by the introduction of an API gateway, as well as independent services, each of which possessed individuals functions and the feature of being deployed and scaled in a distinct manner (Kwiecien, 2019). The adoption of the microservices architecture led to the increase of the overall system reliability and facilitated the separation of concerns by the establishment of more distinctly defined roles of each of the components. It also highlights the ownership of the code and enables autonomous execution of the services (Gluck, 2020).

The implementation of microservices architecture also allows for developer velocity wherein the teams retain the capability of deploying the codes in an independent manner at their own pace (Gluck, 2020), thus, improving productivity. Owing to the fact that the software developed as microservices is fragmented in smaller and independent services, in which each component can be written in its own unique language, aided Uber in the development process, formulating continual delivery and in the acceleration of the growth of the business (Rud, 2020). Consequently, the transition of Uber from a monolithic system to microservices architecture augmented the speed, quality and manageability of the development of the software and the reliability with regards to the factor of fault tolerance, while allowing the teams to focus on just the services that required scaling, thus, speeding up the process (Sundar, 2020). Finally, a few real world applications of microservices architecture for Uber corresponded with the processing and maintenance of the profile data of the customers, handling the different types of available rides on the basis of the location, mapping of the location of the customer and that of the nearly rides on a custom map, formation of a set of potential rides with respect to a specific ride, and computation of the price of the ride in a dynamic manner.

Conclusion

Microservices services remain responsible for the persistence of their external state or personal data. As such, the primary difference from a traditional model is related to the prevalence of a separate layer of data that manages the persistence of data. An understanding of the concepts enable the fulfilment of varied roles and functions, in addition to gaining knowledge on the factors that influence decision-making in the instance of selection of the software development architecture. A number of international companies such as Amazon, Netflix or Coca Cola have opted for a transformation in terms of their IT infrastructure for the implementation of microservice architecture. The process is also accompanied by the rebuilding of the internal organisational structure to obtain a competitive edge.

It is significant to comprehend the principles associated with the said software development, particularly with respect to cloud-based platforms that have found increasing application as preferred hosting solutions for a number of organisations.The transition to microservices architecture has proven to bring with it significant benefits for Uber with respect to the process of development, scaling and independent deployment of each of the microservice. In the same context, it also allows the company to cut back on undesired expenses, while encouraging innovation as well. It has also highlighted the fact that microservices architecture possesses a strong reliance on people and processes within the context of an organisation owing to its involvement with technology, in view of the fact that single microservices stand to be maintained by independent and specialised teams. 

References