Experiment feedback on a microservices architecture

Abstract

The CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, French Space Agency) gave to CSSI the responsibility of the development of REGARDS, a data valorization product which can be used as a true COTS component of Ground Segment. REGARDS is highly flexible to various themes, modular, efficient, long-lasting, evolutionary and scalable. It aims at providing services to Mission Centers and laboratories, and is able to deal with a huge amount of data. REGARDS is already intended to be the CNES archival component for plasma physics, optical, altimetry, etc. data centers. The System design leans on the OAIS (Open Archival Information System) recommendation of the CCSDS (Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems). Consequently, the System allows high-performance ingestion of data and metadata available from providers, either in standard or non-standard formats. In this way, it allows to valorize metadata through upgrade and to provide them to the community thanks to standard protocols of interoperability and advanced search interface (Open search Geo, Faceted search, multiple geospatial projection support). It also offers functionalities which allow long-term data and metadata storage, to ease the system administration in a simple and ergonomic way, to launch back-end processing through standards protocols (WPS, UWS), and to be supervised. REGARDS is an Open Source solution and integrates Open Source COTS (GPLv3 license), which allows a strong commitment of user community in the development of modules and plugins, through a community portal able to manage bugs and evolution requests, backed by a complete and easy-to-use documentation. In order to meet such requirements, CSSI designed a specific architecture to provide business services through tailorable microservices, implemented on the basis of a framework which eases their development and their integration into the System. This paper depicts such architecture and related technologies, together with the feedback from trial implementation.