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Achieving Cloud Scalability with Microservices and DevOps for Connected Cars

Achieving Cloud Scalability with Microservices and DevOps for Connected Cars

Technology News |
By Christoph Hammerschmidt



The Internet of Things poses new challenges for the software industry. This does not only apply to cars, although connecting cars with backend services seem to be one of the major topics in this field. The Google-Android initiative for cars or the current successes in automated driving are just a few examples demonstrating this. One major aspect in connecting things is that there is little value in providing just the connection. The benefit from being connected always goes hand in hand with the provision of a specific service, which is generating the benefit from the connection.

For every solution in the cloud an infrastructure is set up
which needs to be reproducible for quality and control

In the context of software solutions for connected cars, this means that besides providing the connectivity for the car itself and hosting a backend, one major task is to offer the right services for the right purpose. One example of such a service could be offering online navigation. The routing algorithm is implemented by navigation software experts, whereas the data exchange between the car and the backend and the creation of the service is performed by connectivity experts.

Requirements on software development for connected car solutions

As connectivity became a major topic in the automotive industry, Elektrobit (EB) founded the connected car domain in February 2014. The teams in this new domain were already experienced in agile methods like Scrum [SK04] or Kanban [AD2010] and continuous integration. But how does the new key technology, cloud computing, change processes and requirements?

From a technical perspective, the following key points were identified:

  • Scalability (T1): Some components are more often used or are more resource intensive than other components. Therefore, ways to replicate specific components in an efficient way are needed.
  • Exchangeability (T2): Any component in a major software solution is outdated at some point in time. It is important to find a way to exchange a component easily without affecting other components (loose coupling).
  • Reuse (T3): Many projects had a similar feature set for software to work with the cloud. For this reason, a set of standard services to be used in multiple projects was identified.
  • Continuous deployment (T4): A feature added to a service must be visible at once, so that the compatibility with other services can be tested automatically.
  • Code quality (T5): The same code shall be used in different projects (T3). Thus, the demands on quality and genericity have increased.

From an organizational point of view, the following points had the strongest impact:

  • Working mode (O1): Is the development in a cloud environment compatible with agile methods, or is another working mode needed?
  • Team Setup (O2): Do the team members have the right skills? Are specialists within the team or specialized teams needed?
  • Self-Service (O3): In cloud computing, an instance or repository must be available at once, so no additional tasks in the process are acceptable.
  • Configuration Management (O4): For every solution in the cloud an infrastructure is set up which needs to be reproducible for quality and control.
  • Cost controlling (O5): The scaling in cloud computing comes with new demands on cost controlling as instances are paid on an hourly basis and services like AWS Lambda [AC15] are payed according to usage.

Microservices

The microservice architecture is defined as developing an application as a set of small independent services, where each of the services is running in its own independent process [NS14]. Services communicate with some lightweight mechanisms like HTTP [FL14] and are deployed independently [NS14]. The key reason to decide on an architecture based on microservices was the ability to replicate on demand across servers [FL14], which targets directly requirement T1.

The possibility to exchange components easily
without affecting other components is of vital importance
in a cloud environment

 

Moreover, an architectural paradigm with microservices enforces the single responsibility of an individual service and modularity via loose coupling (T2). The modularity of the service is also the key to reuse (T3). The requirements in different projects are similar most of the time, but very seldom are they exactly the same. Additional requirements and features can be easily integrated into a microservice or outsourced into another service. When and how to perform this is the crucial architectural design decision.

Scalability: The decision for an architecture based on microservices
was motivated by the ability to replicate on demand across servers

DevOps

Cloud computing changes the way a team cooperates within itself and interacts with other teams. The deployment of software is an essential task in every release of a software component. Features which were formerly provided by the IT department are now directly part of applications via infrastructure as code [LM12]. This is blurring the line between traditional software development and operations. There are different setups to target this:

  • Close collaboration between the operations team and the development team
  • Developers and operators in one team
  • Every team member performs operations and develops software

EB has decided to follow the latter approach for teams working primarily with connectivity and backend infrastructure. The reason behind this is that cloud computing and connecting things are the key expertise of the employees working on connectivity solutions. In this context, every software developer needs to be familiar with these techniques (O2) and needs knowledge in performing operations. In bigger projects, several teams are working together. In this case, one team takes over the DevOps. The cooperating teams concentrate purely on software development. Microservice architecture, in this context, means that every service has a single responsibility, although the algorithm behind the service might be more complicated (e.g. a routing algorithm).

Cloud computing changes the way a team cooperates
within itself and interacts with other teams

The working mode (O1) follows a Kanban approach. Tasks in operations often need to be performed at once when they are occurring (e.g. the outage of a server). In Scrum, activities need to be planned. This is not possible with these kinds of tasks. Kanban makes it possible to immediately work on high priority targets and to include feature development. Every DevOps team has the right to start and stop instances and services in their respective stage, which allows controlled self-services on cloud resources (O3+O5).

With this arrangement, the next step is to set up a continuous deployment process (T4). In this case, automation is the key for quality and efficiency with techniques like infrastructure as code [LM12] being the key factors. EB is successfully working with AWS CloudFormation [DP15] to have the infrastructure as code, which makes the configuration reproducible (O4). Code can be deployed directly to test instances from the build server (T4). Only the release needs manual interaction.

Software reuse with inner source

One key decision to enable software reuse (T3) is the adaption of open source techniques into our development processes. Here, EB follows the inner source (IS) approach [CR15] by establishing a software forge where the source code was made available to all developers. A forge is a central place where a well-documented code base is kept forever with the possibility to search [CR15]. This allows all developers to use and review the code. Following Linus´s law “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow” [RE01] a higher code quality can be achieved (T5) than with the common four-eye principle alone. Experience showed that the code quality improved and that teams were starting to work together, especially on common tooling. A set of microservices is available via the forge, enabling software reuse in other projects and improving the overall development time.

Summary

With the current setup, EB has begun to improve and create new environments by changing the culture in software development from a classic agile setup to a DevOps culture. This enables the teams to cope with the new technical challenges of cloud computing. From an architectural perspective, the decision for microservices enables EB to scale services and provides necessary flexibility. This is supported from an organizational perspective with a DevOps culture embedded in an agile mind-set and the quality improvements and possibility of software reuse from the inner source approach.

Literature

[AC15] Astakhov V., Chayel M.: Lambda Architecture for Batch and Real-Time Processing on AWS with Spark Streaming and Spark SQL. AWS Whitepaper: https://d0.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/lambda-architecure-on-for-batch-aws.pdf (retrieved 07.12.2015), 2015

[AD10]  Anderson, David J. Kanban. Blue Hole Press, 2010.

[CR15] Capraro M., Riehle D.: Inner Source in Platform-based Product Engineering. Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen Nürnberg Technical Report CS-2015-02, 2015

[DP15] Dalbahanian P.: Overview of deployment options on AWS, AWS whitepaper, https://d0.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/overview-of-deployment-options-on-aws.pdf (retrieved 07.12.2015), 2015

[FL14]  Fowler M., Lewis J.: Microservices a definition of this new architectural term, https://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html (retrieved 07.12.2015), 2014

[LM12] Loukides M.: What is DevOps?, O’Really Media Inc., 2012

[NS14] Namiot, D., Sneps-Sneppe M.: On micro-services architecture. International Journal of Open Information Technologies 2.9: p- 24-27. 2014 

[SK04]             Schwaber, Ken. Agile project management with Scrum. Microsoft Press, 2004.

[RE01]             Raymond, Eric S. The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on linux and open source by an accidental revolutionary. ” O’Reilly Media, Inc.”, 2001.

 

About the author:

Dr. Tobias Schneider is Project Manager, Connected Car at Elektrobit Automotive GmbH, Am Wolfsmantel 46, 91058 Erlangen
tobias.schneider@elektrobit.com

 

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