Maintenance of Microservices applications

We have all heard about the benefits of Microservices Architecture, scalability, isolation, easy migration, etc. But maintaining a live microservices project has its own challenges. There are different teams working on different services during development and each creates its own document. As a result, there is a separate document for each service when the application goes live. As time passes, the team associated with development moves to other projects. The support team also keeps on going through changes. There comes a point where it becomes difficult to find the path of a request because there is no place where details of the integration or interaction of different services is present. Therefore, it is very important to have an integrated document which specifies the following:

• Complete flow of request from client to Data source including all the intermediate points (API gateway, Load balancer, service, etc.) i.e. each point from which the request passes.

• Complete flow of the response.

• Logs indicating the time of request or response at each point

• Tools used to test the services.

• Failure logs or notifications to check at each service.

These would help with the following:

1. Quick identification and isolation of the point of failure.

2. Analysis and Resolution of the failure.

3. Enhancements or addition of new features to the existing system.

4. Training of new joiners in the team.

This document should be constantly updated. Also, all the teams should be aware of it. It may appear an overhead during development, but it is extremely useful for efficient maintenance of the application in the long run.

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