Continuous Architecting with Microservices and DevOps: A Systematic Mapping Study

Abstract

Context: Several companies are migrating their information systems into the Cloud. Microservices and DevOps are two of the most common adopted technologies. However, there is still a lack of understanding how to adopt a microservice-based architectural style and which tools and technique to use in a continuous architecting pipeline.

Objective: We aim at characterizing the different microservice architectural style principles and patterns in order to map existing tools and techniques adopted in the context of DevOps.

Methodology: We conducted a Systematic Mapping Study identifying the goal and the research questions, the bibliographic sources, the search strings, and the selection criteria to retrieve the most relevant papers.

Results: We identified several agreed microservice architectural principles and patterns widely adopted and reported in 23 case studies, together with a summary of the advantages, disadvantages, and lessons learned for each pattern from the case studies. Finally, we mapped the existing microservices-specific techniques in order to understand how to continuously deliver value in a DevOps pipeline. We depicted the current research, reporting gaps and trends.

Conclusion: Different patterns emerge for different migration, orchestration, storage and deployment settings. The results also show the lack of empirical work on microservices-specific techniques, especially for the release phase in DevOps.

A The Selected Studies

• [S1] Lewis, J. and Fowler, M. 2014. Microservices.

  http://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html.

• [S2] Richardson, C. 2014. Microservice Architecture http://microservices.io.

• [S3] Namiot, D. and Sneps-Sneppe, M. 2014. On micro-services architecture. International Journal of Open Information Technologies V.2(9).

• [S4] Vianden, M., Lichter, H. and Steffens, A. 2014. Experience on a Microservice-Based Reference Architecture for Measurement Systems. Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference.

• [S5] Anwar, A., Sailer, A., Kochut, A., Butt, A. 2015. Anatomy of Cloud Monitoring and Metering: A Case Study and Open Problems. Asia-Pacific Workshop on Systems.

• [S6] Patanjali, S., Truninger, B., Harsh, P. and Bohnert, T. M. 2015. CYCLOPS: A micro service based approach for dynamic rating, charging & billing for cloud. Conference on Telecommunications.

• [S7] Toffetti, G., Brunner, S., Blöchlinger, M., Dudouet, F. and Edmonds. A. 2015. Architecture for Self-managing Microservices. Int. Workshop on Automated Incident Mgmt in Cloud.

• [S8] Chen, H.M., Kazman, R., Haziyev, S.,Kropov, V. and Chtchourov, D. 2015. Architectural Support for DevOps in a Neo-Metropolis BDaaS Platform. Symp. on Reliable Distr Syst Workshop.

• [S9] Stubbs, J., Moreira, W. and Dooley, R. 2015. Distributed Systems of Microservices Using Docker and Serfnode. Int. Workshop on Science Gateways.

• [S10] Abdelbaky, M., Diaz-Montes, J., Parashar, M., Unuvar, M. and Steinder, M. 2015. Docker containers across multiple clouds and data center. Utility and Cloud Computing Conference.

• [S11] Villamizar, M., Garcas, O., Castro, H. et al. 2015. Evaluating the monolithic and the microservice architecture pattern to deploy web applications in the cloud. Computing Colombian Conference

• [S12] Alpers, S., Becker, C., Oberweis, A. and Schuster, T. 2015. Microservice Based Tool Support for Business Process Modelling. Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Workshop.

• [S13] Le, V.D., Neff, M.M., Stewart,R.V., Kelley, R., Fritzinger, E., Dascalu, S.M. and Harris, F.C. 2015. Microservice-based architecture for the NRDC. Industrial Informatics Conference.

• [S14] Malavalli, D. and Sathappan, S. 2015. Scalable Microservice Based Architecture for Enabling DMTF Profiles. Int. Conf. on Network and Service Management.

• [S15] Viennot, N., Mathias, M. Lécuyer, Bell, J., Geambasu, R. and Nieh, J. 2015. Synapse: A Microservices Architecture for Heterogeneous-database Web Applications. European Conf. on Computer Systems.

• [S16] Versteden, A., Pauwels, E. and Papantoniou, A. 2015. An ecosystem of user-facing microservices supported by semantic models. International USEWOD Workshop.

• [S17] Rahman, M. and Gao, J. 2015. A Reusable Automated Acceptance Testing Architecture for Microservices in Behavior-Driven Development. Service-Oriented System Engineering Symp.

• [S18] Rahman, M., Chen, Z. and Gao, J. 2015. A Service Framework for Parallel Test Execution on a Developer’s Local Development Workstation. Service-Oriented System Engineering Symp.

• [S19] Rajagopalan, S. and Jamjoom, H. 2015. App-Bisect: Autonomous Healing for Microservice-based Apps. USENIX Conference on Hot Topics in Cloud Computing.

• [S20] Meink, K. and Nycander, P. 2015. Learning-based testing of distributed microservice architectures: Correctness and fault injection”. Software Engineering and Formal Methods workshop.

• [S21] Bak, P., Melamed, R., Moshkovich, D., Nardi, Y., Ship, H., Yaeli, A. 2015. Location and Context-Based Microservices for Mobile and Internet of Things Workloads. Conference Mobile Services.

• [S22] Savchenko, D. and Rodchenko, G. 2015. Microservices validation: Methodology and implementation. Ural Workshop on Parallel, Distributed, and Cloud Computing for Young Scientists.

• [S23] Gadea, C., Trifan, M., Ionescu, D., Ionescu, B. 2016. A Reference Architecture for Real-time Microservice API Consumption. Workshop on CrossCloud Infrastructures & Platforms.

• [S24] Messina, A., Rizzo, R., Storniolo, P., Urso, A. 2016. A Simplified Database Pattern for the Microservice Architecture. Adv. in Databases, Knowledge, and Data Applications.

• [S25] Potvin, P., Nabaee, M., Labeau, F., Nguyen, K. and Cheriet, M. 2016. Micro service cloud computing pattern for next generation networks. EAI International Summit.

• [S26] Messina, A., Rizzo, R., Storniolo, P., Tripiciano, M. and Urso, A. 2016. The database-is-the-service pattern for microservice architectures. Information Technologies in Bio-and Medical Informatics conference.

• [S27] Leymann, F., Fehling, C., Wagner, S., Wettinger, J. 2016. Native cloud applications why virtual machines, images and containers miss the point. Cloud Comp and Service Science conference.

• [S28] Killalea, T. 2016. The Hidden Dividends of Microservices. Communications of the ACM. V.59(8), pp. 42-45.

• [S29] M. Gysel, L. Kölbener, W. Giersche, O. Zimmermann. “Service cutter: A systematic approach to service decomposition”. European Confeence on Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing.

• [S30] Guo, D., Wang, W., Zeng,G. and Wei, Z. 2016. Microservices architecture based cloudware deployment platform for service computing. Symposyum on Service-Oriented System Engineering. 2016.

• [S31] Gabbrielli, M., Giallorenzo, S., Guidi, C., Mauro, J. and Montesi, F. 2016. Self-Reconfiguring Microservices”. Theory and Practice of Formal Methods.

• [S32] Gadea, M., Trifan, D. Ionescu, et al. 2016. A microservices architecture for collaborative document editing enhanced with face recognition. SAC.

• [S33] Vresk, T. and Cavrak, I. 2016. Architecture of an interoperable IoT platform based on microservices. Information and Communication Technology, Electronics and Microelectronics Conference.

• [S34] Scarborough, W., Arnold, C. and Dahan, M. 2016. Case Study: Microservice Evolution and Software Lifecycle of the XSEDE User Portal API. Conference on Diversity, Big Data & Science at Scale.

• [S35] Kewley, R., Keste, N. and McDonnell, J. 2016. DEVS Distributed Modeling Framework: A Parallel DEVS Implementation via Microservices. Symposium on Theory of Modeling & Simulation.

• [S36] O’Connor, R., Elger, P., Clarke, P., Paul, M. 2016. Exploring the impact of situational context - A case study of a software development process for a microservices architecture. International Conference on Software and System Processes.

• [S37] Jaramillo, D., Nguyen, D. V. and Smart, R. 2016. Leveraging microservices architecture by using Docker technology SoutheastCon.

• [S38] Balalaie, A., Heydarnoori, A. and Jamshidi, P. 2015. Migrating to Cloud-Native architectures using microservices: An experience report. European Conference on Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing.

• [S39] Lin, J. Lin, L.C. and Huang, S. 2016. Migrating web applications to clouds with microservice architectures. Conference on Applied System Innovation.

• [S40] Xu,C., Zhu, H., Bayley, I., Lightfoot, D., Green, M. and Marshall P. 2016. CAOPLE: A programming language for microservices SaaS. Symp. on Service-Oriented System Engineering.

• [S41] Amaral, M., Polo, J., Carrera, D., et al. 2015. Performance evaluation of microservices architectures using containers. Int. Symp. on Network Computing and Applications.

• [S42] Heorhiadi, V., Rajagopalan, S., Jamjoom, H., Reiter, M.K., and Sekar, V. 2016. Gremlin: Systematic Resilience Testing of Microservices. International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems.