On this Page
On this Guide
- Lesson 07: Service Discovery and API Gateways
- Lesson 08: Service Mesh – Traffic Management, Observability, and Security
- Lesson 09: Securing Microservices – Authentication, Authorization, and mTLS
- Lesson 10: Continuous Integration and Deployment for Microservices
- Lesson 11: Observability – Logging, Tracing, and Metrics
- Lesson 12: Handling Failures and Timeouts in Microservices
Why CI/CD Matters More in Microservices
In a monolith, you deploy one thing.
In microservices, you may deploy 5, 15, or 100+ independent services.
Without automation:
- Updates are slow and error-prone
- Testing is inconsistent
- Rollbacks are risky
CI/CD pipelines make it safe and repeatable to build, test, and deploy services at scale.
CI/CD Pipeline Structure
For each service, a typical pipeline includes:
- Build
- Compile and package code
- Create Docker image
- Test
- Run unit, integration, and contract tests
- Lint + Security
- ESLint, secret scans, dependency checks
- Tag & Push
- Push Docker image to registry
- Deploy
- Deploy to Kubernetes or another platform
- Notify
- Slack/email/report success/failure
Use one pipeline per service.
Shared templates can reduce duplication.
Versioning and Tagging Strategies
Use version tags to track builds:
user-service:1.4.2inventory-service:2024.05.01-abc123
Avoid using only :latest unless you’re building for dev environments.
Semantic Versioning (MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH) works well for public APIs.
Timestamp + Git SHA tags are helpful for internal-only services.
Deployment Targets: Docker and Kubernetes
Most microservices run in:
🐳 Docker
- Standard packaging format
- Portable and easy to test locally
☸️ Kubernetes
- Schedule and scale containers
- Health checks, auto-scaling, rollouts
- Declarative YAML configs
Use kubectl, Helm, or GitOps tools (e.g. Argo CD) to manage deployment.
Example GitHub Action step:
- name: Deploy to Kubernetes
run: kubectl apply -f k8s/user-service.yamlPopular CI/CD Tools
| Tool | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub Actions | Built-in CI/CD | Great for open source, GitHub-native |
| GitLab CI | Integrated w/ GitLab | Powerful and customizable |
| CircleCI | CI/CD platform | Fast and efficient pipelines |
| Argo CD | GitOps deployment | Declarative, Kubernetes-native |
| Jenkins | Legacy but flexible | Requires more setup |
🛠 Tip: Automate rollbacks and notifications to reduce incident response time.
Summary
CI/CD is essential in microservice environments.
Automate everything from testing to deployment. Use one pipeline per service and deploy frequently, safely, and consistently.
Next up:
Lesson 11 – Observability: Logging, Tracing, and Metrics