A probe into the technological enablers of microservice architectures

Abstract

Microservice architectures (MSA), composed of loosely coupled and autonomous units called microservices, are gaining wide adoption in the software field. With characteristics that are loyal to the requirements of the Cloud environment, such as inherent support for continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD), MSA are actively embraced by the Cloud computing community. Containers employing lightweight virtualization have also been increasingly adopted in the Cloud environment. The containers wrap applications along with their dependencies into self-contained units, which can be deployed independently. These features make it the unanimously accepted technology to enable seamless execution of microservices in the Cloud. With this outlook, this chapter undertakes a study on how containers may be used to support the execution of microservices. The study also includes other technologies that, in collaboration with container technologies, provide the support required for running microservices in the Cloud. An interesting concern for applications running on containers is resource management. Nevertheless, this is a significant aspect for supporting microservices as well. Such issues have been identified and research works addressing all or some of these issues, have been considered. The various relevant studies have been classified into different categories and the future directions have been identified, which can be used by researchers aiming to enhance the technological support for microservices in Cloud. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019.