Microservices Architecture

Microservices Architecture or microservices is a unique method of developing software systems. The main reason benefit in microservices architecture is that some large applications are very easy to develop and maintain when it is break down into small pieces rather than an entire application. And another reason to become microservice such popular is that microservices helps developers to break entire system into small domains and build those individually and deploy them separately. Which means developers can focus for smaller problem rather than big entire problem this helps to focus into smaller issues. And microservices each service run separately and maintain its own database. The main reason behind the separate database is if you have centralize database to all microservices which will simultaneously create bottle neck in database. The entire idea in microservice is being independent and loosely coupled if we have centralized database then all services are depend on database because of that when it is recommended to use separate database for each microservice. The main philosophy behind microservice is “Do one thing and do it well”. All services are running to achieve one main process but each service should be independently deployable and easy to replaceable. And microservice is architecture it is not depends on any specific language or database we can implement it with any programming language. Here are some key features of microservice architecture are mentioned below.

• Scalability

Because of microservices are based on small components it is easy to scale up and down due to the requirement. In some scenarios their might be high demand to certain part of the application when these kind of scenarios microservice are perfectly suits, developers can scale up as per the demand and it will help to give user to a smooth experience when using your system. The microservice is very useful when it comes to large size projects which has large amount of users and need to handle the many number of requests.

• Flexibility in microservice.

Developer gets freedom when it comes to choosing perfect tool to a task. They can develop each service using different language or framework without affecting the communication between microservices. This helps developers to choose different technology stack for different microservice.

• Separated domains.

In current world user user expect to have your system available in anytime and there should not be any unavailable situations. For this reason microservices architecture fits well. In case if one service is fails to available. As developers we have option to use another stable version of the service and make it available to user or even without the failed service the system has ability to run and response to user request because all the other services are loosely coupled which means not depend on any other service.

• Faster development.

Since microservice work independently there is no need to change your entire codebase in order to modify some features. There is ability to change one service, test and deploy it individually this help to deliver the change faster than monolithic. In monolithic system if you want to change some code you should make sure it does not affect another part of your system because monolithic application are tightly coupled because of this reason microservices are more faster on development.

• Reduce redundant business functionalities.

By using microservice as architecture it helps to remove standard reusing part of the system which used across entire system or some other systems use by same organization multiple times as example authentication is one of the good example for this scenario. By developing these kind of parts in systems separately which helps to reduce the redundant. Even you can use some services for different systems across the organization.

• Resilience

Since microservices are independent there are certain cases that we need to communicate multiple services to achieve one single output. In such case if the certain service fails to response or unavailable to complete the output in such scenario there is way to complete the full request cycle without failing the request. This method call fail tolerance and we can use circuit breaker kind of pattern to this which means if one of the service is fail to response in time what should be the default response. This makes microservice to increase resilience of between services.

• Quality of the outcome

In microservices we break large system into small services and develop those small services separately because of that the development team can focus on developing testing one service at a time. Overall developing and testing gives more effective and precise results.

These are some of the main features of microservices architecture which makes microservice architecture to stand out from other architectures. As every other architectures this one also have pros and cons then you can decide whether to use it or not.

Example image of Microservice Architecture

Pros in Microservices.

• The ability to use any programming language or developer tool to develop microservices.
• Building as services which gives huge advantage to containerized and cloud computing.
• Even though microservices uses API call to communicate each other but they do not depend on each other.
• The biggest plus point in microservice is you can develop each service as team which means development, testing and deployment is managed my one team.
• Scalability in microservices. If there is any need of certain service goes high then only thing needed to do is scale that service as per the demand. Which means ability to having multiple copies of containerized application.
• Microservices gives better fault tolerance because microservice are independent there is not impact on each other. If one service fails others can perform as normal.
• If need to change any part only need to modify certain part and redeploy it. There is no need to go through entire application.
• Microservice architecture has faster development cycle and faster time to market because everything can automated by using CI/CD.
• Microservices are loosely coupled and build only for specific purpose there would not be big load time in server and failures are also separated.

Cons of microservices architecture.

• Microservices architecture heavily rely on CI/CD to have this kind of automation you need to bring some DevOps tool like servers for CI/CD and platforms for configuration. This would not be a big problem to the companies who are already using these kind of tools but for a team who is just going to start this would be a challenge for them.
• It is hard to test and monitor as whole application because of the complexity of the architecture.
• Need to have a team who has knowledge in every part of the development and you need find teams for every services that going to build and with having knowledge of every part in development or need to train them.

There are some architects prefer to build their application in monolithic architecture and lately convert monolithic application into microservices. Any monolithic application can convert as microservices step by step because microservices are independent. There is nothing you must start to build your application in microservices architecture because it is hot topic current. It all depends on your requirement if the application you are going to build has rapidly evolving business architecture then you should go with microservice architecture because microservice is all about faster changing. If the system is not that much bigger in scope then you can go with normal monolithic architecture. The decision is up to the architect and depends on the requirement which you have.