Microservice-based architecture for the NRDC

The NSF EPSCOR funded Solar Nexus Project is a collaborative effort between scientists, engineers, educators, and technicians to increase the amount of renewable solar energy in Nevada while eliminating its adverse effects on the surrounding environment and wildlife, and minimizing water consumption. The project seeks to research multiple areas, including water usage at power plants, the effect of power plant construction on the surrounding ecology, alternative wastewater methods to maintain solar panels, and interdisciplinary solutions to improve solar energy in Nevada. In order to organize and analyze this data to produce effective change, Nexus needs a centralized database to store collected data. To this end the Nevada Research Data Center is designed to collect, format, and store data for scientists to view and consider. This paper presents a new architecture solution for the NRDC. Based in microservices, the solution aims to ensure scalability, reliability, and maintainability of this data center. Background on NRDC is provided in the paper, together with details on the proposed solution´s software specification, design, and prototype implementation. A discussion of the microservice-based architecture´s benefits and an outline of planned directions of future work are also included.