building microservices design principles

When your machines start to "quarrel": How microservice design makes every servo motor work harmoniously

Imagine: you design a sophisticated mechanical system with several servos, each of which must turn a specific angle at a specific moment. At first, everything was fine. But as the functions increase, you find that if you change a little program, the entire system may get stuck. Just like a band, each musician is highly skilled, but the scores are mixed together, and it is inevitable to step on each other's feet during the performance.

This is the trouble that many projects encounter on the way to growth. A single module is becoming more and more bloated, affecting the whole body. what to do? Some people have begun to try a design idea called "microservices". This sounds very technical, but to put it bluntly, it is a philosophy of letting the system "break it into parts and perform their own duties."

Why take the system apart? It's not just about "looking neat"

Some people may ask, isn’t the original way good? Putting all the code together makes it easier to manage. But this is like tying all the wires of servo motors, controllers, and sensors together randomly. It saves trouble in the short term, but once there is a problem with a certain line or you need to upgrade one of the components, you will be in big trouble. You have to find the thread in a dense ball of thread, and the risk is high.

Microservice design is like preparing an independent, encapsulated "small box" for each core functional module - such as the module that controls the rotation of a certain servo, the module that processes position feedback, and the module that manages motion trajectories. Each box has clear responsibilities. How to implement it internally is its own business. It only provides a few clear and simple interfaces to the outside world. Boxes "talk" to each other in a lightweight way.

One of the most direct benefits of doing so is "isolation". A "small box" that serves servo control needs to be updated. You just need to move it, and it generally will not affect another box that processes sensor data. System stability is improved.

Good microservice design, what exactly is "designing"?

There are many principles, but the key lies in “degree”. If you dismantle it too finely, the boxes will chat too frequently, which will slow down efficiency; if you dismantle it too roughly, the old problem will return. Here are a few unavoidable thinking points:

1. Break it down around "business capabilities" rather than "technology". This is the core. You don't divide them by "database layer" or "logic layer", but by what the system actually does. For example, in a robot arm control system, "trajectory planning" is a clear business capability, and "joint position closed-loop control" is another. Each microservice addresses a core business domain.kpowerWhen assisting clients in program design, it is often found that clarifying these independent business boundaries is the first and most critical step.

2. Autonomy is golden. Each service is as independent as possible from development, deployment to operation. It has its own data storage (even just one) and does not rely on other services' databases for direct access. It's like each servo has its own drive board and feedback circuit. Although it accepts the overall command, the action execution is self-sufficient. This independence brings freedom of technology choice, allowing you to choose different processors for compute-intensive services.

3. Smart “conversation”, not “bundling”. Services need to collaborate, but the communication method should be lightweight, asynchronous and decoupled. Typically via a well-defined API such as a simple HTTP API or a message queue. Avoid complex, synchronous, tightly coupled call chains. Imagine if each servo had to call all other servos before moving, how slow would it be? They just need to receive explicit instructions, execute them, and then report completion status asynchronously.

4. Tolerating mistakes is more important than never making mistakes. Any service can fail. Good design assumes that failure will happen. There must be timeout control, circuit breaker protection, and degradation strategies. For example, when the "real-time monitoring" service is temporarily unavailable, the core "motion control" service can still continue to run for a period of time based on known valid instructions, rather than crashing directly. This increases the overall resilience of the system.

This sounds complicated, will it be a nightmare to implement?

Indeed, microservices introduce the complexities of distributed systems, such as network latency, data consistency, monitoring and deployment challenges. But it is not complexity for the sake of complexity, but rather short-term management complexity in exchange for long-term business agility and system resiliency.

You don't even need a huge system to get started. You can start with a core function that you think is most likely to change independently, or that has the greatest performance pressure, and strip it into the first microservice. For example, first isolate the “path planning” part that often needs adjustment. Use actual small-scale trials to verify the idea and understand the benefits and costs (such as the need for better logging and monitoring).

kpowerIn working with many partners, we have found that the key to success often lies not in pursuing a perfect architecture from the beginning, but in establishing a suitable engineering culture and automation infrastructure, including continuous integration/delivery, containerization technology, service mesh and comprehensive observability (monitoring, logging, tracing). This allows the development team to enjoy the flexibility of microservices without being overwhelmed by the operation and maintenance burden.

So, what exactly does it bring?

As you gradually move towards this path, some changes will quietly occur. Deployments become frequent and low-risk, and you can individually update the service that controls the servos instead of having to reboot the entire system late at night. The technology stack can be selected as needed. C++ is used for the servo control part that requires extremely high real-time performance, and Python or Go is used for the upper-level business logic. Each one uses its strengths. Scalability is also more flexible. If sensor data processing becomes a bottleneck, you can add computing resources to this service alone.

Ultimately, it's like a precision mechanical system that's modularized nicely. Each servo motor unit (microservice) is highly specialized, reliable and easy to maintain. When it's time to add new functionality to a machine, you add a new, well-defined module to an existing, stable-running chassis, rather than re-welding the entire frame.

This is not a silver bullet, it requires thoughtful design and supporting tool culture. But when faced with complex and evolving product requirements, this way of building systems provides a possible path to make complexity controllable and accelerate the pace of innovation. The starting point of everything is whether you are willing to think about the internal structure of your system like designing an exquisite machine.

Established in 2005,kpowerhas been dedicated to a professional compact motion unit manufacturer, headquartered in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, China. Leveraging innovations in modular drive technology, Kpower integrates high-performance motors, precision reducers, and multi-protocol control systems to provide efficient and customized smart drive system solutions. Kpower has delivered professional drive system solutions to over 500 enterprise clients globally with products covering various fields such as Smart Home Systems, Automatic Electronics, Robotics, Precision Agriculture, Drones, and Industrial Automation.