Azure Service Fabric: An In-Depth Breakdown

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As the tech world becomes more granular at the source, new applications and architecture sprout up, seemingly every year. One application that has come to the forefront is Azure Service Fabric, a PaaS designed by Microsoft to construct and deploy cloud-based applications deemed to fall under the microservices umbrella. As an open-source project, Azure Service Fabric builds on the previous concept of monolithic applications, effortlessly improving on it. Curious to learn more? Let’s start by breaking down monolithic applications.

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What’s a Monolithic Application?

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Before diving into microservices, knowing what a monolithic application is underscores the importance of Azure Service Fabric and ensures a deeper understanding of it. These applications are single-tiered, where numerous components coalesce into one massive application. They are difficult to manage because of their vast codebase. For example, rewriting may be necessary when just one program element needs an update. As a result, your staff may experience less agility and decreasing speed functions. While there are various benefits attached to monolithic architecture, such as better potential for throughput, and easier testing and debugging processes, microservices like Azure Service Fabric are revolutionizing the issues that plagued this application.

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What Are Microservices?

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Compared to the Monolithic architecture, microservices are, just that, micro. This architecture is a minute versioned code set. In conjunction with other APIs, it can communicate with other services. In turn, it structures applications through this communication, combining deployable and loosely coupled services. For example, if your organization runs a vast and complex application, microservices will deliver it rapidly and reliably, expediting processes that used to be time-consuming. Microservices have fixed other issues plaguing data infrastructure that runs a monolithic architecture, such as availability risks. 

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Thanks to independent component functioning using APIs communicated through digestible interfaces, your organization will experience shorter development cycles, additional features since the code isn’t shared, easier scheme updating, mitigated downtime thanks to the individuality of microservices, and denser service and scalability options thanks to single host orchestrators. While microservices have many benefits, they can be quite complex. While each service is perceived as simpler, there are more moving components than that of a monolithic application. Additionally, there are other issues stemming from utilizing many singular services that lead to latency as chains grow longer, data integrity because each architecture is responsible for its data persistence (although this is a non-volatile option), and lack of proper governance because of tangled languages and frameworks.

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Why Azure Service Fabric?

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While its monolithic predecessor was a time-consuming slog, Azure Service Fabric has simplified these processes while building on what made this architecture great. The platform has simplified the development of microservices and application management and works in coordination with familiar programming models and languages while ensuring your application can handle high-throughput workloads. 

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What Does It Do?

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Azure Service Fabric was designed to build complex, stateful, and stateless services that can effortlessly scale to meet varying demands while maintaining high availability and fault tolerance. Service Fabric chips away at the growing complexities of infrastructure management, allowing developers and engineers to center their attention on writing code and defining the business logic of their applications. With built-in support for orchestrated containerization, service discovery, health monitoring, and auto-scaling, Azure Service Fabric imbues organizations and developers to create resilient and agile applications that can adapt to constant requirements and deliver consistent performance at scale. 

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How Do You Benefit?

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As a host of your infrastructure, you can scale on demand, using the platform as a container host. Additionally, you can use it for provisioning, deployment, and continuous monitoring. While the platform is hosted on Azure, it works with any cloud environment, whether that’s a public cloud, on-prem, or Azure. Moreover, Service Fabric is ideal for those looking for a stringent monitoring process of their applications and infrastructure. However, it can be quite a challenge to monitor if you don't have the necessary developers on staff. This form of monitoring is processed through the application's business logic, where your developer must integrate it on their own with the tool of their choosing. Azure Service Fabric is beneficial for organizations looking for autoscaling capabilities, whether it’s scale-in or scale-out. With a Service Fabric cluster, your nodes can be provisioned to scale to your demand requirements. While manual intervention is not always necessary, it may be a prerequisite for instance setting. It’s crucial to configure node types independently to deploy proper autoscaling measures. There are many planning considerations for developers and Data Engineers to assess, so make sure to undergo the proper procedures for a successful Service Fabric experience. 

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Why DataStrike?

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With over 100 years of training, DataStrike will assess your current environment and help you understand how to optimize your data infrastructure. Then, we provide systematic implementation and configuration alongside our top-tier monitoring and maintenance support. Are they struggling to understand orchestrated containers? Are your developers lacking in technical prowess? Are they not able to identify individual variables? We’ve got you covered. We provide 24x7x365 support while delivering a reliable model built to take down threats as they occur. 

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About DataStrike 

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DataStrike is the industry leader in 100% onshore data infrastructure services and enables companies to harness IT changes as a catalyst for growth. With a network of highly specialized experts, strategic partnerships with the world's biggest technology providers, and a platform agnostic approach, DataStrike provides innovative solutions and practical guidance to accelerate digital transformation initiatives and drive better business outcomes for small-to mid-sized businesses. Click here to learn more about our service offerings.      

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