Scaling Your Application Infrastructure with Kubernetes & Microservices

Kubernetes is revolutionizing the capabilities of microservices. When Kubernetes manage and deploy microservices, they adapt and scale to meet changing demands.

Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration platform. It automates the deployment, management, and scaling of applications in distributed environments. It has an ecosystem of tools and integrations that aid in microservices deployment. A microservices architecture focuses on creating many independent services. They are a collection of small, loosely coupled services that can be deployed & scaled individually. Each microservice focuses on a specific business capability.

In this article, we will dive deeper into how Kubernetes enhances microservices and how to integrate them effectively. 

How to Scale Microservices Correctly

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Scaling microservices is crucial for ensuring optimal application performance and eliminating bottlenecks. Microservices have numerous options for scaling. We will expand on that later in the article.

Here are a few points that ensure that microservices are being scaled effectively:

• The software architecture and deployment strategies should be compatible with the environment.
• The architecture of the application stack should allow for up-scaling and down-scaling.
• After scaling, the whole swarm should work as a single unit.
• The Four Golden Signals help monitor resource usage and metrics. The signals are:
  • Latency: This is the time taken to respond to a request. Monitoring latency helps to identify performance bottlenecks and also optimizes response time.
  • Traffic: Traffic is the number of requests received in a given time. This signal helps us understand the load on the services and make informed scaling decisions.
  • Errors: Errors are the rate of failing requests. It helps in identifying issues. After which you can take necessary actions to improve the reliability of services.
  • Saturation: Saturation tells us how the services are being utilized. Monitoring saturation helps us determine if our services are running at capacity. Or if they need additional resources.

Best Practices for Scaling Microservices with Kubernetes

To maximize the potential of scaling microservices using Kubernetes, follow reliable methods. Here are the five main points to take note of.

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1. Creating Scalable Service Designs

There should be provisions made for scalability while designing microservices. Automated scaling and appropriate sizing of virtual machines can meet any future needs.

The following points can make sure that the designed microservices are scalable:

Statelessness

A stateless service does not store any information about the application’s state. This ensures that no data is lost when Kubernetes scale the services.

Loose Coupling

The risk of cascading failures reduces when services have minimal dependencies on each other. Loose coupling also makes it easier to scale individual services.

API Versioning

API versioning is always prudent while creating updates. This will prevent overwriting of changes made by a service, and it will also allow for a smoother scaling process.

Service Discovery

Service discovery helps identify the location of the services being employed in Kubernetes. This helps prevent failures due to incorrect or outdated configuration settings.

Read the rest of this article on RTInsights.

Jinal Lad Mehta also contributed to this article.

Mehta is a digital marketer at Middleware AI-powered cloud observability tool. She is known for writing creative and engaging content. She loves to help entrepreneurs get their message out into the world. You can find her looking for ways to connect people, ideas, and products.