APIs, Microservices, Cloud-native – Docker and Serverless training

In IT everybody is talking about APIs and microservices. In this APIs, Microservices, Cloud-native – Docker and Serverless training you will learn the latest trends for application design. Development skills are not needed for this training.

This training is meant for Product Owners, managers and IT engineers. You can find a detailed agenda at the end of this page. This training is also part of our Masterclass Digital Transformation.

If you develop your own software or outsource software development, the question remains: which design pattern to choose? What are the differences, the advantages and disadvantages?

You will learn the best practices for software design, evolved from Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and influenced by the Cloud. One of the concepts is a clear arrangement for the communication (interface) between applications, which has led to the RESTful APIs. An almost natural evolution is the step to Microservices, made necessary by continuous delivery and continuous integration.

However, don’t underestimate the step to Microservices and APIs. Design for failure, a Dynamic Service Discovery, API Gateways and SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) are vital to prevent outages, avoid complexity and especially to gain changeability and flexibility (TTM Time to market). To be able to offer a new App, new functionality or new IoT/smart device before your competitor can be decisive for your company.

Influenced by the Cloud we now have Cloud-native application deployment / installation methods like containers / Docker and an immutable (unchangeable) infrastructure (throw away and install again). This new WoW has impact on your application and development processes. But don’t think you can pick up your container and move it from your datacenter to the Cloud or from Azure to AWS without much effort: IT DEPENDS.

Another form of a Cloud-native application is Service Mesh (with a sidecar). This is the concept which separates the management and development of non-functionals like connection logic (load balancing, routing, logging but also security) from your business logic/application and enables you to create platform teams.

Finally, you can choose for Serverless, with management of infrastructure and middleware completely in control of the Cloud Service Provider (CSP): you only need to focus on the business logic. This is potentially very cost effective but can also mean a vendor lock-in. However, this is becoming more and more mature and is quickly embraced by the Open Source community. Serverless does NOT mean NoOps…

Agenda APIs, Microservices, Cloud-native – Docker and Serverless training

• What are the main characteristics of SOA: loosely Coupling, the concept of a contract for your interface, reusability
• What are the characteristics of a RESTful API?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of an API?
• Why is a dynamic service discovery important?
• API Gateways
• What are differences between an API and a Microservice?
• The problem with (long) API chains
• The importance of SRE Observability, Tracing
• What is an application container?
• What are the requirements for an application to run in an application container
• The 12-factor App
• What is Docker and Kubernetes
• The Microservices hierarchy of needs
• Differences between Cloud Service Providers (CSP)
• What is a Service Mesh?
• Advantages and pitfalls of a Service Mesh
• Wich Service Mesh tools are available: Istio, Envoy, Linkerd, Consul and Open Service Mesh (CNCF).
• What is Serverless?
• What is the difference between Function as a Service (FaaS) and Backend as a Service (BaaS)
• What do the CSP’s offer: AWS Lambda, Azure Functions etc.
• NoOps?