Blockchain-Backed Microservice Tracing for Interaction Visualization
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Solution Overview
Problem
It is difficult to visualize and analyze the inbound and outbound calls associated with a group of microservices in distributed environments, making it challenging to understand successful and failing interactions, latency, and geographical locations of calls.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that utilizes a blockchain to log events from microservices, inject a tracer into requests, and generate visualizations of microservice interactions, including transaction types, latency, and success/failure rates, using an active directory federation service for authentication and machine learning for prediction.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If microservices are deployed in distributed environments to improve system scalability and flexibility, then system adaptability and productivity are improved, but the complexity of tracking and visualizing operational interactions among microservices increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a blockchain-based intermediary ledger that mediates between multiple microservices and the tracing system. The blockchain building program acts as a mediator that collects events from various microservices, records them immutably on the blockchain, and makes them queryable by the microservices tracing program, thereby simplifying the complexity of direct tracking between distributed services
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements feedback mechanisms where microservices log events to the blockchain, the tracing program queries these events, and generates visualizations that feed back to operators for monitoring and analysis. This closed-loop feedback system enables continuous observation and understanding of microservice interactions
2Measurement precision
If comprehensive logging of all microservice events is implemented to improve measurement precision, then interaction analysis capability is improved, but the quantity of data to be processed and stored increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the essential and relevant events from microservice operations that are worth tracking and analyzing. The blockchain building program selectively logs meaningful events (such as successful calls, failed calls, latency information) rather than all possible data, thereby maintaining measurement precision while controlling data volume
Solution Approach 2:
The system segments the tracing functionality into distinct components: event generation at microservice level, event recording on blockchain, event querying by tracing program, and visualization generation. This segmentation allows each component to handle only its specific portion of data processing, reducing overall system complexity and data handling burden
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods for visualizing and analyzing operational interactions of microservices are disclosed. A method for visualizing operational interactions of microservices may include: (1) calling, by a source microservice, a target microservice with a request, both the source microservice and the target microservice being in a plurality of microservices; (2) logging, by the source microservice, an event; (3) recording, by a blockchain building program, the event to a blockchain as a table and as an index; (4) receiving, by a microservices tracing computer program, the request; (5) processing, by the target microservice, the request with a tracer; (6) returning, by the target microservice, a microservice identity for the target microservice with requested data; (7) logging, by the microservices tracing computer program, the requested data using the tracer; and (8) generating, by the microservices tracing computer program, a visualization of microservice interactions from the requested data.