How are DevOps and Microservices Tied Together?

DevOps (Development Operations) is a methodology for the development of coders, testers, and other IT specialists in a company. Such a system is needed so that the team works better, efficiently, and harmoniously, corrects mistakes on time and competently interacts with each other. A specialist in this methodology is called DevOps engineering.

Microservices and DevOps work better together. Companies have realized that splitting monolithic applications into separate services can bring them significant gains in performance, speed, flexibility, scalability, and reliability. Microservices management provides the foundation for continuous delivery methods that allow teams to adapt to user requirements.

So, if you are interested in knowing more about it, follow the article till the end.

What is the Purpose of DevOps?

DevOps is described as an ideology, approach, or set of methods. In simple words, these are both processes and special technical solutions that create a unified work environment within the team. Therefore, the methodology can be described in different ways. The main thing is the goal: all of the above is needed to improve communication between different IT department specialists.

Before DevOps, developers, testers, and administrators often worked at random, and this led to slowdowns, disruptions of processes, and many unnoticed errors. Software updates could be released every few years, and by the time they appeared, many things had already become outdated. It was ineffective. Therefore, a flexible Agile methodology has appeared, implying continuous development in small iterations. DevOps as an idea grew out of this methodology.

It helps:

• to facilitate continuous work on the product so that errors in communication do not slow it down;

• create a convenient environment for all specialists working on the project, so that there will be no bugs when transferring work from one employee to another;

• accelerate and improve development, make processes more efficient;

• increase customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction;

• think over the structure of the project in such a way that there are fewer hard dependencies in it — so that when replacing some component, all work does not stop.

These tools have three goals: acceleration of product release, automation of processes, and fast feedback from customers and users.

How are Microservices Used for DevOps?

This is the architecture of the application, according to which it is divided into many small and independent modules. Each of these modules is a separate microservice. The use of this architecture is typical of the DevOps philosophy. Luckily, independent modules have a number of advantages:

• If one microservice fails, the rest will continue to work — there is a lower risk that the entire system will fail;
• If you need to reallocate resources within one module, this can be done without affecting others;
• When adding a new microservice, you will not need to change the others — they work independently.

Microservices are connected to each other through an API, a special interface that helps modules “communicate” without interfering with their internal work.

Why are Microservices Ideal for DevOps?

The traditional approach to application development is focused on the monolith. In a monolithic architecture, all the functions and services of the application are inseparable and work as a single unit. 

When an application is supplemented or improved in any way, the architecture becomes more complicated. Therefore, it is more difficult to optimize a specific function without having to reconstruct the entire application. You can also say that scaling a single process involves scaling the entire application.

In microservices, the application architecture is designed in such a way that each key function is performed independently. This allows development teams to create and modify new components to adapt to changing business needs without disrupting the entire application. 

This approach benefited many development teams until the applications became too complex. To change a small piece of code in a monolithic system, you have to reassemble the entire system, test it, and deploy a new version of the application.

Microservices Management 

At this stage, software systems are broken down into small elements that can be developed and deployed independently of each other. The microservice architecture was developed with the support of DevOps adherents who required a fast delivery of updates — new features, bug fixes, and security improvements. In addition, with such an architecture, many companies could rewrite outdated applications using modern programming languages and an updated technology stack.

Thus, the Microservices made DevOps a more complex and more complicated system, which, however, is easier to work with now.