What are microservices?

Microservices , is an architectural Pattern that structures an application as a collection of small autonomous interconnected services, modeled around a business domain.

This is in contrast to a traditional, “monolithic” application which is all developed all in one piece

Each service in Microservices are self-contained and implements a single business capability.

Monolithic vs Microservices

Microservices

Monolithic Architecture

Monolithic means composed all in one piece. The Monolithic application describes a single-tiered software application in which different components combined into a single program from a single platform

Challenges of monolithic Architecture

Inflexible - Monolithic architecture is not flexible. We can’t use different technologies. The technology stack is decided at the start and followed throughout
Unreliable – Even if one feature of the system does not work, then the entire application might go down
Unscalable - difficult to scale up once they get larger. Each time the application needs to be updated, the complete system has to be rebuilt
Block Continuous deployment: Continuous deployment is extremely difficult. Large monolithic applications are actually an obstacle to frequent deployments. In order to update one component, we have to redeploy the entire application.
Difficult to building complex applications: It’s difficult to build a complex application because of the limitations in terms of technologies.

Microservices Architecture

Clients – Different users from various devices send requests.
Identity Providers – Authenticates user or clients identities and issues security tokens
API Gateway – Handles client requests.
Static Content – Houses all the content of the system.
Management – Balances services on nodes and identifies failures.
Service Discovery – A guide to find the route of communication between microservices.
Content Delivery Networks – Distributed network of proxy servers and their data centers.
Remote Service – Enables the remote access information that resides on a network of IT device Microservices Features.

Microservices Features

Decoupling – Different components in a microservices architecture can be changed, upgraded, or replaced independently without affecting the functioning of other components. Similarly, the teams responsible for different microservices are enabled to act independently from each other.
Componentization – Microservices are treated as independent components that can be easily replaced and upgraded
Business Capabilities – Microservices are very simple and focus on a single capability
Autonomy – Developers and teams can work k k k
Continuous Delivery – Allows frequent releases of software, through systematic automation of software creation, testing, and approval
Responsibility – Microservices do not focus on applications as projects. Instead, they treat applications as products for which they are responsible
Decentralized Governance – Microservices architectures are distributed systems with decentralized data management. They don’t rely on a unifying schema in a central database. Each microservice has its own view on data models. Microservices are also decentralized in the way they are developed, deployed, managed, and operated.

Pros of Microservices

Independent Development – each service is developed and deployed independently from all the other services. This means an update to any one component does not require the entire application to come down in order to deploy that update, only the component in question. This allows for improved uptime and safer deployment processes.
Independent Deployment – Based on their services, they can be individually deployed in any application
Fault Isolation – Even if one service of the application does not work, the system still continues to function
Technology Heterogeneity – With a system composed of multiple, collaborating services, we can decide to use different technologies inside each one. This allows us to pick the right tool for each job, rather than having to select a more standardized, one-size-fits-all approach that often ends up being the lowest common denominator.
Granular Scaling – Individual components can scale as per need, there is no need to scale all components together Cons of Microservices
Increases delay due to remote calls
Increases troubleshooting challenges
Tough to track data across various boundaries
Increased efforts for configuration and other operations
Difficult to code between services