Cloud Containers as a Service

Container is a standard unit of software that packages up code and all its dependencies so the application runs quickly and reliably from one computing environment to another

Kubernetes is an open-source container management tool which holds the responsibilities of container deployment, scaling & descaling of containers & load balancing. Being the Google’s brainchild, it offers excellent community and works brilliantly with all the cloud providers. So, we can say that Kubernetes is not a containerization platform, but it is a multi-container management solution.

Microservices are a software development technique —a variant of the service-oriented architecture (SOA) structural style— that arranges an application as a collection of loosely coupled services. In a microservices architecture, services are fine-grained and the protocols are lightweight.

Kubernetes and Docker work together.

Docker provides an open standard for packaging and distributing containerized applications. Using Docker, you can build and run containers, and store and share container images.

Kubernetes orchestrates and manages the distributed, containerized applications that Docker creates. It also provides the infrastructure needed to deploy and run those applications on a cluster of machines.

1. Independent components: all the services can be deployed and updated independently, which gives more flexibility
2. Easier understanding: split up into smaller and simpler components, a microservice application is easier to understand and manage.
3. The higher level of agility: any fault in a microservices application affects only a particular service and not the whole solution. So all the changes and experiments are implemented with lower risks and fewer errors.
4. Flexibility in choosing the technology. The engineering teams are not limited by the technology chosen from the start. They are free to apply various technologies and frameworks for each microservice.
5. The higher level of agility. Any fault in a microservices application affects only a particular service and not the whole solution. So all the changes and experiments are implemented with lower risks and fewer errors.

1. Microservices expertise. Without proper skills and knowledge, building a microservice application is extremely risky. Still, just having the architecture knowledge is not enough. You need to have DevOps and Containers experts since the concepts are tightly coupled with microservices. Also, domain modelling expertise is a must. Dealing with microservices means splitting the system into separate functionalities and dividing responsibilities.
2. A complex and scalable application. The microservices architecture will make scaling and adding new capabilities to your application much easier. So if you plan to develop a large application with multiple modules and user journeys, a microservice pattern would be the best way to handle it.
3. Enough engineering skills. Since a microservice project comprises multiple teams responsible for multiple services, you need to have enough resources to handle all the processes.