This document discusses node.js and containers for microservices architectures. It describes how microservices architectures break large monolithic applications into many smaller independent services. Node.js is well-suited for microservices due to its lightweight footprint and asynchronous nature. Containers provide an efficient way to run many independent services on a single machine by virtualizing at the operating system level. The document outlines lessons learned from rewriting a cloud orchestration system called SmartDataCenter using a microservices and container-based architecture.

1. node.js and Containers:
Dispatches from the Frontier
CTO
bryan@joyent.com
Bryan Cantrill
@bcantrill

2. Application architecture, circa 2000
• The late 1990s saw the rise of three-tier architectures consisting
of presentation, application logic and data tiers
• Many names for roughly the same notion: “Service-oriented
architecture”, “Model/View/Controller”, etc.
• The AJAX+REST revolution of the mid-2000s gave rise to true
web applications in which application logic could live on the edge
• Led to some broader architectural questioning...

3. Post-AJAX questions
• Why should HTTP be restricted to the web?
• Why should REST be restricted to web apps?
• Instead of having one monolithic architecture, why not have a
series of (smaller) services that merely did one thing well?
• In case this sounds vaguely familiar...

4. The Unix Philosophy
• The Unix philosophy, as articulated by Doug McIlroy:
• Write programs that do one thing and do it well
• Write programs to work together
• Write programs that handle text streams, because that is a
universal interface
• The single most important revolution in software systems thinking
• Applying it to HTTP-based services...

5. Microservices
• Microservices do one thing, and strive to do it well
• Replace a small number of monoliths with many services that
have well-documented, small HTTP-based APIs
• Larger systems can be composed of these smaller services
• While the trend it describes is real, the term “microservices” isn’t
without its controversy...

6. Microservices

7. Developing microservices
• node.js is a perfect fit for microservices:
• Light memory footprint
• Purely asynchronous
• Expresses Unix programming model with respect to the
operating system (processes, pipes, files, sockets, etc.)
• Module approach encourages libraries over frameworks
• node.js is itself an expression of the Unix philosophy

8. Deploying microservices
• Microservices are tautologically small
• One physical machine per service is clearly uneconomical…
• ...but deploying many orthogonal services on a single machine is
a well-known operational nightmare (e.g. conflicting
dependencies, shared fault domain)
• The key is to virtualize — but at what layer of the stack?
• Virtualization has ramifications with respect to performance and
density — which is to say, economics

9. Hardware-level virtualization?
• The historical answer to virtualization — since the 1960s — has
been to virtualize the hardware:
• A virtual machine is presented upon which each tenant runs an
operating system that they choose (and must manage)
• There are as many operating systems on a machine as tenants!
• Can run entire legacy stacks unmodified...
• ...but operating systems are heavy and don’t play well with others
with respect to resources like DRAM, CPU, I/O devices, etc.
• With microservices, overhead dominates!

10. Platform-level virtualization?
• Virtualizing at the application platform layer addresses the
tenancy challenges of hardware virtualization, and presents a
much more nimble (& developer friendly!) abstraction...
• ...but at the cost of dictating abstraction to the developer
• This is the “Google App Engine” problem: developers are in a
straightjacket where toy programs are easy — but sophisticated
applications are impossible
• Virtualizing at the application platform layer poses many other
challenges with respect to security, containment, etc.

11. OS-level virtualization!
• Virtualizing at the operating system hits a sweet spot:
• A single operating system (i.e. a single kernel) allows for efficient use of
hardware resources, maximizing tenancy and performance
• Disjoint instances are securely compartmentalized by the operating system
• Gives tenants what appears to be a virtual machine (albeit a very fast one)
on which to run higher-level software: PaaS ease with IaaS generality
• Also: boots like a bandit!
• Model was pioneered by FreeBSD jails and taken to their logical
extreme by Solaris zones — and then aped by Linux containers

12. OS-level virtualization at Joyent
• Joyent runs OS containers in the cloud via SmartOS — and we
have run containers in multi-tenant production since ~2006
• Adding support for hardware-based virtualization circa 2011
strengthened our resolve with respect to OS-based virtualization
• This is especially true for microservices: as services get small,
overhead and latency become increasingly important — and OS
containers become a bigger and bigger win
• Our belief in containers for microservices comes from our own
experience in developing cloud management software...

13. SmartDataCenter as microservices microcosm
• SmartDataCenter is our cloud orchestration system
• Reflects its times: born in ~2006 as a Rails app; by late 2011,
consisted of some node.js microservices + a Ruby monstrosity
• In 2012/2013, we rewrote SmartDataCenter to be entirely node.js-
based, microservices-based and container-based
• Open sourced in November 2014: https://github.com/joyent/sdc
• Learned many things along the way — some more surprising than
others...

14. Microservices: State management
• While decentralization is an important tenet of microservices, be
careful about applying this to canonical state
• State should be offered through its own microservice that can be
rigorously developed, tightly controlled, closely managed, etc.
• To this end, we developed Moray, a node.js-based key/value
store backed by replicated Postgres
• Moray’s Postgres replication is managed (and automated) with
Manatee, a node.js + ZooKeeper-based system
• Essentially all of our services are backed by Moray + Manatee

15. Microservices: Deployment + config
• With their larger numbers, microservices will exacerbate any
deployment, configuration or image management pain
• To alleviate this, we developed our own services API (SAPI) —
but the results were still dissatisfying...
• A little-known PaaS called dotCloud saw the same problem and
developed a container-based solution for image management...
• Docker allows developers to encode deployment procedures via
an image that can in turn be deployed as a container
• Docker will do to apt what apt did to tar

16. Microservices: CAP omnipresence
• Some malcontent towards microservices may stem from the
breathlessness of some of its proponents, especially with respect
to resilience and reliability
• Microservices make your system more distributed — and
therefore more vulnerable to its CAP tradeoffs
• More monolithic systems are able to hide from CAP — or are
deliberately C+A systems
• It’s not just CAP: performance pathologies can be much more
difficult to understand in a distributed system

17. Microservices: System topology
• Our system is historically an AMQP/HTTP hybrid
• The principles of AMQP are very attractive…
• ...but in practice, implementation and operational issues have
made message brokers a single point of failure
• We still use AMQP for some kinds of broadcast traffic, but we try
to go point-to-point and HTTP as quickly as we can

18. Microservices: Service discovery
• Moving from monolithic to microservices means moving from
tightly coupled to a loosely federated system — and necessitates
service discovery
• We developed Binder, a node.js-based DNS + ZooKeeper system
• While Binder has been sufficient for our needs, service discovery
remains broadly a thorny problem — especially around rollbacks,
service maintenance, etc.

19. Microservices: Interface primacy
• Microservices have many more interfaces — so interface-based
pathologies will naturally become more acute
• ...and JSON-based systems can exhibit interface-based pathologies
not seen in more rigid systems
• We use JSON Schema (v3) to add rigor without sacrificing agility
• We implement HTTP routes with Restify, a node.js module that
includes support for interface versioning (+ DTrace support!)
• Postel’s Law (“...an implementation should be conservative in its
sending behavior, and liberal in its receiving behavior”) remains
helpful, but apply with moderation!

20. Microservices: Pathological behavior
• Systems will misbehave — and distributed systems have much
more surface area; hope is not a strategy!
• We have invested heavily in node.js-based infrastructure to allow
us to quickly diagnose aberrant behavior in production:
• Bunyan is a logging facility for node.js (+ DTrace support!)
• SmartOS DTrace support for node.js profiling
• SmartOS support for JavaScript heap analysis from core files
• See @dapsays’ “Industrial-grade node.js” talk!

21. Microservices: Containers
• OS containers have made our microservices approach possible
• They have proven essential for every aspect of our system: speed
of deployment, robustness, latency, debuggability, etc.
• Historically, our approach has been limited to SmartOS...
• While SmartOS is Unix, it’s not Linux — and we understand that
many (most?) have an established Linux binary footprint...
• We have implemented support for LX-branded zones in SmartOS
that allow for Linux binaries (and distributions!) to run out-of-the
box in a secure OS container

22. Microservices, containers and node.js
• Microservices represent a real and important trend in systems
• We have found node.js to be the perfect fit for implementing these
systems — especially given its production debugging support
• Containers have been an essential ingredient for our own
deployment of microservices-based architectures
• LX-branded zones will allow our microservices approach to be
applicable to a much broader audience!

23. Thank you!
• @mcavage, @pfmooney, @dapsays, @yunongx, @tumederanges for
Moray/Manatee (https://github.com/joyent/moray)
• @dapsays and @tjfontaine for bringing humanity debugging support for
node.js in production
• @trentmick for Bunyan (https://github.com/trentm/node-bunyan)
• @trevero, @notmatt for Binder (https://github.com/joyent/binder)
• @joshwilsdon for much of SDC — and for being right about AMQP
• Jerry Jelinek, @pfmooney, @jmclulow and @jperkin for their work on
LX-branded zones