Consistent Disaster Recovery for Microservices: the BAC Theorem

TitleConsistent Disaster Recovery for Microservices: the BAC Theorem
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2018
AuthorsPardon, G., C. Pautasso, and O. Zimmermann
JournalIEEE Cloud Computing
Volume5
Issue1
Pages49-59
MonthJanuary/February
Keywordsavailability, BAC theorem, consistency, disaster recovery, Microservices
Abstract

How do you back up a microservice? You dump its database. But how do you back up an entire application decomposed into microservices? In this article, we discuss the tradeoff between the availability and consistency of a microservice-based architecture when a backup of the entire application is being performed. We demonstrate that service designers have to select two out of three qualities: backup, availability, and/or consistency (BAC). Service designers must also consider how to deal with consequences such as broken links, orphan state, and missing state.

URLhttp://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8327550/
DOI10.1109/MCC.2018.011791714
Citation Key2018:ieeecloud:bac
Refereed DesignationRefereed