How Can Containers Help You Use Microservices in DevOps?
For many companies today, containers and microservices are both becoming a normal part of the industry landscape. According to a global survey put out by Statista in 2021, 19% of enterprise organizations today say they are already utilizing containers to achieve their business goals, while 92% of respondents claim microservices to be a success factor. That said, containers and microservices are not the same—and will ultimately affect the success of DevOps teams in different ways.
Microservices and Containers
The term “microservices” describes two things—it is the name for the actual components used to build large applications and refers to the overall approach to software architecture and design. The way a microservices architecture works in IT involves breaking software down into pieces of related services. As a result, many businesses are now relying on microservices to advance the work of DevOps teams. Many reports indicate the relationship between microservices and DevOps practices will likely continue to grow into the foreseeable future.
A single container, on the other hand, contains all the necessary executable files—such as libraries, binary code and configuration files—to run anything from a small microservice to a fully developed application, much like a virtual machine. They are lightweight, portable and come with considerably less overhead to speed greater efficiency and application development. Containers provide the operating landscape for the workloads themselves. Given the recent rise of Kubernetes, it’s no surprise that some 88% of respondents have adopted this open source technology to run their container orchestration—and individual microservices.
DevOps and Microservices
In a nutshell, microservices are changing the way organizations address software development. The service-based approach of DevOps works well with microservices architecture, mostly because it allows businesses to break down applications into smaller services. Proper design and implementation of key technologies are central to the success of DevOps delivery. But with many organizations trying to move from a monolithic architecture to more agile settings, this shift is not always easy or straightforward. Breaking down monolithic systems and splitting them into smaller pieces is not always feasible or possible. The process demands a tenuous combination of software architecture, development methodologies and automation testing—all of which are closely related to DevOps practices. And when these areas are not fully achieved, DevOps teams (and their software builds) suffer.
Managing microservices in today’s landscape means dealing with hidden dependencies and rigid systems. To make matters worse, DevOps teams often use different technology stacks, tools and frameworks to build applications. This reality can make software development a real challenge for DevOps folks. But when used properly as a flexible architecture, microservices can play a major role in streamlining DevOps workflows and the overall quality of application development. And this means cloud-native applications that are capable of fulfilling any user need are easy to build.
DevOps and Containers
Containerization essentially means placing a software component, as well as its dependencies, environment and configuration, into an isolated unit known as a container. Containerized applications are powering the shift to cloud-based deployments, as they extend and complement microservices-based architectures. Not only does packaging each service as a container image minimize complexity, but it also streamlines a continuous pipeline of software delivery.
Users can create isolated and portable application environments with containers, allowing them to be deployed with all the necessary dependencies. Kubernetes and Rancher platforms, for example, offer the type of robust orchestration needed for containerized deployments. And this is where automation plays a big part in how software is built and deployed.
For example, Docker containers, a technology used to incorporate and store code (and its dependencies), are a great fit for DevOps. They offer benefits over the virtualization of bare-metal deployment. This translates into faster deployment, fewer tapped resources, more flexibility and overall easier management. And these advantages help DevOps teams section applications into microservices, each of which can be updated and deployed for better agility and velocity. Developers can also standardize the way their applications are packaged, delivered and shipped across the development life cycle.
Building DevOps Best Practices
In truth, orchestrating and managing containers has become integral to DevOps practices. When an image changes, the container itself must be repurposed. This can happen by pushing new application code directly to the container that’s already running, but potential risks around functionality and security emerge. To rectify this issue and streamline the process, best practices need to be front and center, such as automation to accelerate the container build.
A lot of best practices for containers and DevOps revolve around the need for speed and security. Developers often use public repositories to find container images, as well as their own custom-built components. DevOps teams need to scan and verify these images early in the build phase to ensure security vulnerabilities in base images are found and fixed before moving to the next stage. This process requires full automation for simple adoption and quick remediation of security issues by developers.
