Last Updated on October 7, 2023 by KnownSense
In this Article, we’ll be covering a number of key technologies that are key to implementing successful microservices architecture. Not only will you learn about what these technology types are, but you will also learn what advantages they bring to your software architecture. So by the end of this article, not only will you know which technology types and patterns you need to use for your microservices architecture, but you’ll also know exactly which design principles they’re helping. So let’s get started with load balancers.
Load Balancers
In the world of microservices, a load balancer plays a crucial role in optimizing the distribution of network traffic among multiple microservice instances. It is an essential component that helps ensure the availability, scalability, and reliability of microservices-based applications.
Refer page Load Balancers for more details
Service Registry
Another key component required by the microservices is a service registry, and the service registry can either be built into the load balancer or it can be a separate system by itself. The service registry is basically a database which lists all your microservices and each one of their instances by location, for example, IP address and ports and that kind of thing. This database of service instance locations is used by components like load balancers to basically look at what service instances are available and their locations so that traffic can be routed to them.
Refer page Service Registry for more details
API Gateway
In a microservices architecture, an API gateway is a server that acts as an entry point for all incoming client requests. It serves as a central point of control and coordination for managing and routing requests to various microservices within the system. It plays a crucial role in simplifying the complexities of microservices communication. It offers various other features for security, routing, transformation, and management of requests and responses.
Read it in more details here: API Gateways
Synchronous Communication
Synchronous communication style is basically a pattern of making a request and then waiting for an immediate response, and it’s suitable in an area, for example, where our client applications need to talk to our microservices architecture. This kind of communication style can also be used by our microservices to talk to external services, external APIs. It also can be used between our microservices to talk between our microservices.
Refer page Synchronous Communication for more details
Resiliency Patterns
In page Microservices Design Principle: Resiliency, you’ve seen one of the key design principles is resiliency, which is all about failing fast and providing alternative functionality when something does go wrong. The good news is there’s a set of resiliency patterns that can be used to achieve this, and the same patterns can also be used to resolve the challenges around synchronous communication.
There are many resiliency patterns like circuit breaker, retry pattern, timeout pattern, caching strategies
Please refer Resiliency Patterns page to read about all different pattern in details.
OpenAPI and API Catalogues
OpenAPI is a standard that can make our microservices self‑documenting. These documents can then be used to create an API catalog of all our microservices within our microservices architecture. So again, we can communicate that data and functionality to all the areas within our business. The OpenAPI standard and the technologies that support our standard can help us expose and make visible all these contracts and interfaces.
Refer page OpenAPI and API Catalogues for more details
Asynchronous Communication
Asynchronous communication is a messaging pattern where services send and receive messages independently of each other. The massive advantage of having asynchronous communication throughout our microservices architecture is that we gain both performance and resiliency. So, for example, when we place an order on our mobile application, part of that transaction can be done in an asynchronous fashion, in a file‑and‑forget fashion. So we can return control back to the calling application, our client application, instantly because part of the transaction are done in the background by placing messages on a message broker that are eventually processed by our microservices. So we gain performance by responding immediately back to our client application, and we also get performance by having multiple instances of our microservices competing for the same type of messages.
You can read more about Asynchronous patterns, benefits and best practices in Asynchronous Communication page
Transaction Manager for Distributed Transactions
Transaction managers are essential in microservices architectures to ensure data consistency and reliability. In a distributed system with multiple microservices, individual services may perform transactions independently, leading to potential inconsistencies and partial failures. Transaction managers coordinate these transactions, allowing for either all successful updates or effective compensation for failures, thus maintaining overall data integrity and system robustness.
Read more details : Transaction Manager for distributed transactions