Deploying a Distributed Cloud-based Microservice Application Benchmark Suite

Cloud services have lately transitioned from a single monolithic application to several loosely coupled microservices. This design shift from a single complex monolithic application to tens or hundreds of single-purpose microservices has enabled modern cloud services to be deployed, scaled, and managed in a more efficient way. Microservices can be deployed inside their own lightweight containers hosted on a cloud platform, and they can be individually developed, updated, tested, and elastically scaled. Each microservice can also be developed in its own suitable language, with only a common API for microservices to communicate with each other. Due to these benefits, large cloud providers and services such as Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Twitter have adopted the microservice architecture model in recent years. In this project, we will study and deploy a known distributed cloud service benchmark suite that is representative of a real industrial application with tens of microservices hosted on multiple cloud virtual machines. This suite covers a broad spectrum of popular cloud services such as social networking service, media service and an e-commerce service. Each service consists of multiple microservices that use different languages, programming models and open-source frameworks. The microservices will communicate using RESTful APIs and will enable simulating user traffic flow through a load generator tool. The final project outcome will generate a modular and extensible distributed microservice application suite that is deployed on a popular cloud platform and can be used by faculty members and students for performance debugging and simulating a practical representative industrial cloud service.