Getting Started With
Containers and Microservices:
A Mini Guide for Enterprise Leaders
An introduction on how to effectively implement and monitor
containers and microservices.
Introduction
Across a variety of large, global companies, DevOps teams are Developers use containers and microservices in many
adopting containers and microservices, two of many new tools tasks, from app delivery to migration of legacy systems to
and practices that are offering solid business benefits. cloud servers. The increased popularity in containers and
microservices can be attributed to their impact on agile cloud
Containers are isolated workload environments in a environments, with benefits that include increased efficiency,
virtualized operating system. They speed up workload greater speed of delivery, and the ability to do more with
processes and application delivery because they can be existing resources.
spun up quickly; and they provide a solution for application-
portability challenges because they are not tied to software And while the benefits of containers and microservices are
on physical machines. causing an increase in usage, there are also some complexities
to be aware of. For example, while usage is exploding, many
Microservices are a type of software architecture that developers are still learning how to use these relatively new
is light and limited in scope. Single-function applications tools and practices. This means organizations must maintain
comprise small, self-contained units working together data security, system reliability, and other service levels during
through APIs that are not dependent on a specific language. the learning curve.
A microservices architecture is faster and more agile than
traditional application architecture. As far as ongoing use, enterprises must work to prevent
application sprawl, unauthorized use, problematic code, and
And while containers and microservices exist independently other issues that could go undetected if unmonitored.
and serve different purposes, they’re often used together.
For example, microservices are often delivered in one or
more containers.
Over half of technology professionals surveyed for the Cloud Foundry Global Perception Survey on containers
indicated they were evaluating/using containers, with 64% anticipating mainstream usage within a year.
— Cloud Foundry Foundation
Getting Started With Containers and Microservices: A Mini Guide for Enterprise Leaders Page 2
Understand the Impact:
Resources, Strategy, and Monitoring
Containers and microservices have implications for resource management, strategic goals, and monitoring capabilities.
Use these questions to begin to understand and document what those implications could be.
Resource Management MICROSERVICES FYIs
How much of our workload should be moved to microservices? Containers are an enabling technology for
Where is the best place to start using containers? microservices: Because containers are isolated
How will usage impact our current stack today and in the environments, they can be used to deploy
future? Fault tolerance? Proliferation of languages, caching, microservices quickly, regardless of the code language
and requests? used to create each microservice.
Microservices are making the enterprise IT stack
Strategic Goals more complex, and thus more difficult to monitor:
Microservices focus on solving a particular problem,
How can we ensure the development group and operations
which means the technologies they choose to employ
group are working together to use containers and
can change for any given service. The introduction
microservices in alignment with enterprise needs?
of more technologies means that DevOps teams will
Do we need to restructure our teams so that we are using be overwhelmed with data if they choose to use a
containers and microservices according to enterprise goals? monitoring tool that is too narrow.
Traditional logging is ineffective because
Monitoring Capabilities microservices are stateless, distributed, and
Will we build our own system to manage container assignment, independent: If attempting to log them, an enterprise
clustering, etc.? Or should we use third-party vendors that will would produce way too many logs to easily identify
need to be monitored? a problem. Logging must be able to correlate events
Will we be able to monitor code inside containers and the across several platforms.
components that make up microservices with our current
application performance management (APM) footprint?
Getting Started With Containers and Microservices: A Mini Guide for Enterprise Leaders Page 3
Do You Need Better
Monitoring Capabilities?
After considering the implications of containers and microservices, you may discover that you need to find a new APM
solution that will fill the identified coverage and capabilities gaps. To choose an effective solution, use this eight-point
plan, which is based on best APM practices.
1 Document what you want to achieve so that you can Make a wiki and playbook for users
share with APM solution vendors. Operationalize input from subject matter experts
Use consistent terminology as you define: and power users
Vision and goals Hold regular review/success meetings
Priorities and plans
Roles and responsibility 3 Define a measurement framework.
Be sure that you ask about: Determine KPIs and how they’ll be measured
Education and onboarding of new users Determine how to best leverage flow maps and
baselines
Integration with your main technology stacks
Use of APM throughout the SDLC (software
development life cycle) 4 Keep flows intact.
In choosing a solution, be sure that it will:
2 Embed ways to share knowledge about the Provide end-to-end correlation
new solution. Show contextual views of flows
These actions will ensure that knowledge about the new
solution can be shared with all users of the APM solution.
Getting Started With Containers and Microservices: A Mini Guide for Enterprise Leaders Page 4
5 Configure signals from noise. 7 Secure your privacy.
Make sure the solution can be calibrated to prioritize Securing enterprise data should be a priority during
needs from noise. implementation. Ask these questions of application
Ensure Business Transactions are correct providers:
Baseline all metrics to minimize alerts to truly Is sensitive data going to be protected
abnormal activity out-of-the-box?
Is there a way to limit access to within
our organization?
6 Explore your options.
Understand the multitude of options at
your disposal 8 Prioritize automation.
Slice and dice your data to identify what Three areas that can be automated are:
you can do Agent deployment
Configurations (advanced)
Information flow
Getting Started With Containers and Microservices: A Mini Guide for Enterprise Leaders Page 5
AppDynamics for APM
AppDynamics’ APM solution can help enterprises prepare Microservices and Containers
for safely adopting and scaling the use of containers and
Are Here to Stay
microservices, as well as other emerging tools and technologies
As the race to a more agile cloud environment continues,
used by DevOps teams.
enterprise users will need to understand not only how to
See all applications and environments in your stack: develop technology solutions faster, but how to monitor
Monitoring and visibility are among the top challenges of everything that is happening across their technology stack.
users who are adopting containers. AppDynamics gives
Let your teams take full advantage of containers and
you metrics on the container, the operating system, server,
microservices by ensuring you have an APM solution that
and applications.
will scale as they are spun up, used, and decommissioned
Lower the risk of migrating to containers: over and over again within your technology stack.
Because you get visibility into the dependencies your
This is where AppDynamics excels. With AppDynamics
applications have on one another, you can be proactive
integrated into your technology stack, your enterprise can
about managing them.
move fast, without having to worry about breaking things.
Have the right level of monitoring no matter how
many containers or microservices are in use:
AppDynamics scales APM as you grow.
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