Microservice architecture advocates a number of technologies and practices such as lightweight container, container orchestration, and DevOps, with the promised benefits of faster delivery, improved scalability, and greater autonomy. However, microservice systems implemented in industry vary a lot in terms of adopted practices and achieved benefits, drastically different from what is advocated in the literature. In this article, we conduct an empirical study, including an online survey with 51 responses and 14 interviews for experienced microservice experts to advance our understanding regarding to microservice practices in industry. As a part of our findings, the empirical study clearly revealed three levels of maturity of microservice systems (from basic to advanced): independent development and deployment, high scalability and availability, and service ecosystem, categorized by the fulfilled benefits of microservices. We also identify 11 practical issues that constrain the microservice capabilities of organizations. For each issue, we summarize the practices that have been explored and adopted in industry, along with the remaining challenges. Our study can help practitioners better position their microservice systems and determine what infrastructures and capabilities are worth investing. Our study can also help researchers better understand industrial microservice practices and identify useful research problems.

中文翻译：

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没有免费午餐：业界重新思考微服务实践

微服务架构提倡轻量级容器、容器编排和 DevOps 等多项技术和实践，并承诺具有更快交付、提高可扩展性和更大自主权的好处。然而，工业中实施的微服务系统在采用的实践和实现的收益方面差异很大，与文献中所提倡的截然不同。在本文中，我们进行了一项实证研究，包括对经验丰富的微服务专家进行 51 次回复和 14 次访谈的在线调查，以加深我们对行业微服务实践的理解。作为我们发现的一部分，实证研究清楚地揭示了微服务系统的三个成熟度级别（从基础到高级）：独立开发和部署、高可扩展性和可用性、和服务生态系统，按微服务实现的好处分类。我们还确定了 11 个限制组织微服务能力的实际问题。对于每个问题，我们总结了行业中已经探索和采用的实践，以及剩余的挑战。我们的研究可以帮助从业者更好地定位他们的微服务系统，并确定哪些基础设施和能力值得投资。我们的研究还可以帮助研究人员更好地了解工业微服务实践并确定有用的研究问题。以及剩余的挑战。我们的研究可以帮助从业者更好地定位他们的微服务系统，并确定哪些基础设施和能力值得投资。我们的研究还可以帮助研究人员更好地了解工业微服务实践并确定有用的研究问题。以及剩余的挑战。我们的研究可以帮助从业者更好地定位他们的微服务系统，并确定哪些基础设施和能力值得投资。我们的研究还可以帮助研究人员更好地了解工业微服务实践并确定有用的研究问题。