The ever-changing business needs of the industry have compelled design and architectural approaches to adapt in order to meet these challenges. A plethora of software architectures, designs, and styles have emerged over time. To navigate this landscape, you should possess the right tools and technologies, as well as evolving design and architecture methodologies. The way we build and manage our applications today has changed in response to recent developments in technology and design, such as containerization and microservices. In this blog, we'll explore the basics of microservices architecture and examine how to monitor applications based on this approach.
A monolith consists of components that are tightly integrated within a single source code base. Consequently, you would build, deploy, and scale the application as a single entity. While this approach may facilitate quick debugging and testing – since all your dependencies and files are in one place – it can also lead to significant challenges in maintainability, scalability, and deployment. Because the components in a monolith are entangled with one another, making changes or updates can be difficult due to the tight coupling and complex dependencies among the application's components. As a result, changes in one part of the code base can affect other parts of the application.
In recent years, microservices and serverless architectures have gained popularity because they offer better flexibility and scalability than their monolithic counterparts. Microservices architecture is an approach to building applications by breaking them into smaller, lightweight components. These can be tested, updated, and deployed independently, without affecting other components of the application.
Below are a few reasons why you should adopt a microservices architecture:
- Modularity : A microservices-based application consists of a conglomeration of several loosely coupled services, each built and deployed independently. You can scale and update each service without affecting the others because each has its own codebase.
- Service Boundaries : Each microservice represents a specific business capability and encapsulates its data storage and processing logic. Defining your service boundaries early can save you from regret later on. It's essential to understand the boundaries and purposes of your services.
- Decentralized Data Management : Decentralized data management allows each microservice to have its own database. Typically, data is managed within the boundaries of the service; when data sharing is necessary, APIs are used for communication between services.
- Independent Deployment : Microservices can be deployed independently, facilitating faster development cycles and easier updates and bug fixes. This independence allows teams to use homogeneous or heterogeneous technologies and frameworks as needed.
- Resilience : The failure of one specific microservice does not affect other components or services. In other words, the rest of the services continue to operate during a failure, thereby enhancing the system's overall resilience.
- Scalability : You can scale individual microservices independently, allowing for efficient resource allocation. Decoupled components make applications built using microservices architecture easier to scale.
- Inter-service Communication : Microservices often need to communicate with one another for data or information exchange. They do so through well-defined APIs, built using Representational State Transfer (REST), GraphQL, or message queues.
Adopting a microservices architecture can bring numerous benefits to your application development process. From increased modularity to independent deployment and scalability, this approach offers a flexible and efficient way to build and manage complex applications. By understanding the challenges of a monolithic architecture and embracing the principles of microservices, you can take advantage of the latest developments in technology and design to create robust and resilient applications.
