RX-M, a cloud-native training, consulting, and advisory firm, provides vital strategies, insights, and tactical approaches in its Cloud Native Short Takes series. In the latest take, In the first of two, industry expert and consultant Jerry Lozano provides an overview of Microservice architecture and design.
Video Transcript
Welcome to another RX-M Cloud Native Short Take today’s topic is about microservice architecture. My name is Jerry Lozano; I’m an instructor and consultant for RX-M. I’m going to talk to you about exactly what a microservice is. Let’s define what that term means and then explain how microservices fit into a software architecture, how they redefine the way we think about building software applications.In part two of this short take we’ll talk about the pros and cons of using microservices; their benefits and the downsides things to watch out for with microservices.
Let’s get started. Okay first of all what is a microservice? As the name implies it is a small, a very small part of a much larger application. A microservice is an isolated piece of an application that runs as a separate process. In fact it runs as a containerized process; so each microservice runs in its own container. An application could be broken down into a series of very small pieces. Consider a ride sharing application in Uber or Lyft type application; there’s so many parts to such a large application worrying about passengers and drivers and trips and of course accepting payments from a passenger to pay for the trip. That one small piece–a payment–might be an appropriate microservice. The microservice would receive a credit card number, an amount of money to charge and perhaps a CVV number and based on that information the microservice for payments would have the credit card authorized by Mastercard or VISA or whoever. That’s all that the payment microservice would do.
You know you have a good microservice defined when that microservice has one clear responsibility; a crisply defined responsibility. When that responsibility is actually part of the business domain–the problem domain–and not based around any particular technology. Microservices should be able to plug in and plug out of an application; they should couple to each other loosely through a well-defined interface; usually a restful interface but there are other options.
Microservices is just one of many cloud native and Kubernetes modules from RX-M visit RX-M.com and select “Extensive Cloud Computing Course List” listing under the Training menu to better understand the vast training options offered by our RX-M team. Look for Microservices part 2 on our YouTube channel where you can subscribe for more content from our team, thank you.