Over the last twenty years, how we deploy applications has changed a lot. Businesses today need their applications to run smoothly with as little downtime as possible.

At first, deploying applications was slow, expensive, and complicated. However, new methods were developed to solve these problems. The big tech companies were the first to adopt these new methods, and that’s one reason they’ve stayed on top.

Let’s look at how deployment has evolved over the years:

1. Monolithic Applications

In the early days of application development, most companies used a monolithic architecture. The term "monolithic" means that everything in the application was bundled together into a single unit.

Imagine building a house where all the plumbing, electrical work, and structure were part of one solid block. If you wanted to change the plumbing, you’d have to break open the entire block. That’s essentially how monolithic applications work.

  • How it Works: A monolithic application contains all the different parts (or functions) of the system in a single package. For example, your user interface, business logic, and database functions would all live together in one codebase.
  • Fast Development: Early on, this was great for developers because it was simple to get started. Since all parts of the application were tightly connected, it was easy to build and deploy quickly.
  • Good Performance: Communication between different parts of the application was fast because everything was in the same system.

However, as applications grew in complexity, this model showed some serious weaknesses:

  • Tight Coupling: Since everything is packed into one application, changing or upgrading one part could affect the entire system. This made it harder to maintain and update.
  • Difficult to Scale: If you wanted to scale one part of your application (for example, the user interface), you had to scale the entire application, which wasted resources.
  • Challenging to Monitor and Debug: When a problem occurred, it was difficult to isolate where it was happening. If one part failed, the entire application could crash.

These issues led to the need for a better solution, especially as businesses grew and needed to handle more users, more data, and more frequent updates.

2. Microservices Architecture

To overcome the challenges of monolithic applications, developers began using Microservices Architecture. Instead of building one big application, microservices break it down into smaller, independent components called microservices.

Think of microservices like a city. Each microservice is a building that serves a specific purpose, like a hospital, school, or store. Each building operates independently but works together to form a complete city. If the hospital has an issue, it doesn’t affect the school or store.

  • How it Works: In microservices, each service does one thing. For example, one service might handle user login, while another service manages inventory, and another processes payments. Each microservice can be built, updated, and scaled independently.
  • APIs for Communication: Since microservices are separate units, they need a way to talk to each other. This is done through APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). APIs let the microservices exchange information without being tightly connected.

Why Microservices Are Better:

  • Independence: You can update or change one microservice without worrying about breaking the whole system. For example, if you need to update the login system, you don’t have to touch the payment system.
  • Better Scalability: Since each service is separate, you can scale only the services that need it. If you’re getting a lot of traffic on the user login, you can scale just that part of the system instead of the whole application.
  • Fault Tolerance: If one microservice fails, it doesn’t bring down the entire application. The rest of the services can continue running while you fix the broken one.

Challenges of Microservices:

While microservices solve many problems, they also introduce new challenges:

  • More Complexity: Managing lots of small services can be complicated. You need to ensure that all microservices communicate properly and handle errors gracefully.
  • Distributed Systems: Since microservices are often deployed across different servers or locations, you need a solid system for managing network communication and monitoring each service.

Overall, microservices have become the go-to architecture for modern applications, especially for large, complex systems.

3. Containers

What are Containers?

The next big step in application deployment was the use of containers. Containers are a way to package and run applications so that they’re isolated from other software on the same system.

Think of containers as shipping containers on a cargo ship. Each container holds something different (like food, electronics, or furniture), but they are all transported in the same way. Similarly, a software container holds everything an application needs to run, such as the code, libraries, and configuration files.

  • How it Works: When you run an application in a container, it behaves as if it has its own isolated environment, even though it’s sharing the same operating system with other containers. This means developers can build an application on their computer, package it in a container, and it will run the same way in production.
  • Faster Start-Up: Unlike virtual machines (which take minutes to boot), containers can start and stop in seconds. This makes deploying updates or starting new services much quicker.
  • Resource Efficiency: Containers use fewer system resources because they don’t need to run a full operating system like virtual machines do. Instead, they share the host system's OS but still keep applications isolated from one another.

Why Containers Are Popular:

  • Consistency: A container runs the same way no matter where you deploy it. Whether it’s on a developer’s laptop or a cloud server, the container’s environment stays consistent, which reduces the risk of bugs due to differences in environments.
  • Easy to Scale: You can run multiple copies of the same container to handle more traffic. This makes containers perfect for cloud environments, where you need to scale services up or down quickly.
  • Portability: Containers are lightweight and portable, making it easier to move applications between different systems or cloud providers.

Challenges with Containers:

  • Management Overhead: While containers make deployment easier, managing hundreds or thousands of containers can be difficult. That’s where container orchestration tools like Kubernetes come into play, automating tasks like scaling, monitoring, and networking.

4. Virtual Machines vs. Containers

Although containers have become very popular, it’s important to understand how they differ from traditional virtual machines (VMs):

  • Virtual Machines: A virtual machine runs an entire operating system, including its own copy of the OS kernel. This means it’s more isolated from the host machine but also uses more resources (CPU, memory, disk space).
  • Containers: Containers share the host machine’s OS, which makes them lighter and faster but less isolated than VMs. Containers are typically used when you need to run many small applications, while VMs are better for running larger, more isolated applications.

Today, most modern applications use containers for their deployment, while virtual machines are still used in cases where more isolation is required or where legacy systems are involved.