Microservices architecture has gained significant popularity in the United States and around the world due to its ability to address the ever-growing demands of modern web applications. This approach provides several advantages, including enhanced scalability, easier maintenance, and improved resilience to system failures. However, it’s essential to acknowledge that implementing a microservices architecture can be a complex endeavor.
When contemplating the adoption of a microservices architecture for your web application in the United States, several key considerations should guide your decision-making process.
In the upcoming sections, we will discuss more on how, what and why it’s important.
Microservice Architecture Statistics: What You Need to Know
- According to a recent survey by Gartner, 70% of US businesses are planning to adopt serverless computing within the next two years.
- The serverless computing market in the US is expected to grow from $4.8 billion in 2022 to $22.2 billion by 2027.
- 60% of US businesses are already using serverless computing for at least one application.
- The top three use cases for serverless computing in the US are mobile backends, microservices, and event-driven applications.
- 75% of US businesses are using serverless computing to improve the agility and scalability of their applications.
- 65% of US businesses are using serverless computing to reduce the cost of their infrastructure.
What is Microservices Architecture?
Microservices architecture is a software design pattern that structures an application as a collection of loosely coupled services. Each service is self-contained and performs a specific task. Microservices architecture can be used to improve the scalability, maintainability, and resilience of web applications.
Imagine a web application that sells products. A traditional monolithic web application would have a single codebase that handled all of the tasks of the application, such as authentication, authorization, product catalog management, order processing, and payment processing.
A microservices-based web application for selling products would be made up of a collection of smaller, independent services. For example, there might be a separate service for authentication, authorization, product catalog management, order processing, and payment processing. Each service would have its own codebase and would be responsible for a specific task.
The services in a microservices-based web application communicate with each other through APIs. For example, the order processing service might call the product catalog management service to get the price of a product before processing the order.
Why we need to use Microservices Architecture
When your application is complex and has many different features:
Microservices architecture can help you to manage the complexity of your application by breaking it down into smaller, more manageable services. This makes it easier to develop, test, and deploy new features. It also makes it easier to understand and maintain the application code.
For example, a large e-commerce website might have microservices for different tasks such as product search, product recommendations, order processing, and payment processing. Each of these microservices can be developed and maintained independently, which makes the overall application easier to manage.
When your application needs to be highly scalable:
Microservices architecture makes it easy to scale your application up or down by scaling individual services as needed. This is because microservices are loosely coupled and can be deployed independently.
For example, if an e-commerce website is experiencing a spike in traffic on its product search page, the product search microservice can be scaled up to handle the increased load. This will allow the website to continue to operate smoothly, even if other parts of the website are not experiencing high traffic.
When your application needs to be highly maintainable:
Microservices architecture makes it easier to maintain your application by making it easier to identify and fix bugs, and to make changes to services without affecting other parts of the application. This is because microservices are self-contained and have well-defined interfaces.
For example, if a bug is found in the product search microservice, it can be fixed without affecting the order processing or payment processing microservices. This makes it easier to keep the application running smoothly and to release new features without introducing bugs.
When your application needs to be highly resilient:
Microservices architecture makes your application more resilient to failures by allowing other services to continue operating even if one service fails. This is because microservices are loosely coupled and can be deployed independently.
For example, if the product search microservice fails, the e-commerce website can still continue to operate by using a cached version of the product catalog. This allows the website to remain available to users, even if one part of the website is not working.
Different types of Microservice Architecture
API-driven microservices architecture:
This type of architecture uses APIs to communicate between microservices. This makes it easy to develop and deploy new microservices, and to scale microservices up or down as needed. However, it can add overhead to the communication between microservices, and it can be difficult to debug and troubleshoot problems.
An e-commerce website might use an API-driven microservices architecture to separate the different parts of the website, such as the product catalog, the shopping cart, and the payment processing system. This would allow the website to be scaled up or down as needed, and new features could be added easily by developing new microservices.Event-driven microservices architecture:
This type of architecture uses events to communicate between microservices. This makes it easy to develop loosely coupled microservices that can respond to events in real time. However, it can be difficult to design and implement an event-driven architecture, and it can be difficult to trace the flow of events through the system.
A social media application might use an event-driven microservices architecture to notify users when their friends post new content, or to recommend new content to users. This would allow the application to respond to events in real time and to provide a more personalized experience for users.Process-based microservices architecture:
This type of architecture groups microservices together into processes. This makes it easier to manage and deploy microservices, and to ensure that microservices are executed in the correct order. However, it can be difficult to scale processes up or down independently, and it can be difficult to debug and troubleshoot problems.
A financial trading application might use a process-based microservices architecture to ensure that trades are executed in the correct order and that risk is minimized. This would be difficult to achieve with a different type of microservices architecture.Hybrid microservices architecture:
This type of architecture combines elements of different microservices architectures. For example, an application might use an API-driven architecture for some microservices and an event-driven architecture for other microservices. This allows the application to benefit from the strengths of different architectures.
A large enterprise application might use a hybrid microservices architecture to combine the strengths of different architectures. For example, the application might use an API-driven architecture for some microservices and an event-driven architecture for other microservices.
Benefits and challenges of microservices architecture
Challenges faced when implementing Microservice Architectures
Scalability:
Microservices can be scaled independently, which means that you can scale up or down individual microservices as needed to meet demand. This can be useful for applications that experience spikes in traffic, such as e-commerce websites during the holiday season.
For example, if your e-commerce website is experiencing high traffic on the product catalog page, you can scale up the product catalog microservice without having to scale up the entire application. This will allow you to handle the increased traffic without affecting the performance of other parts of your application.
Maintainability:
Microservices are easier to maintain than monolithic applications because they are smaller and more self-contained. This means that it is easier to identify and fix bugs in microservices, and to make changes to microservices without affecting other parts of the application.
For example, if you need to make a change to the payment processing microservice in your e-commerce website, you only need to change the codebase for that microservice. You don’t need to change the codebase for the product catalog microservice or any other microservices in the application. This makes it easier to maintain your application and to release new features more quickly.
Resilience:
Microservices architecture makes applications more resilient to failures. If one microservice fails, the other microservices can continue to operate. This means that your application will still be able to handle requests, even if one part of the application is not working.
For example, if the payment processing microservice in your e-commerce website fails, customers will still be able to browse the product catalog and add items to their cart. They will just not be able to complete their purchase until the payment processing microservice is back online.
Agility:
Microservices architecture makes it easier to develop and deploy new features more quickly. This is because you can develop and deploy new features to individual microservices without having to deploy a new version of the entire application.
For example, if you want to add a new feature to your e-commerce website, such as the ability to purchase products using cryptocurrency, you can develop and deploy a new microservice for cryptocurrency payments. You can then deploy the new microservice without having to deploy a new version of the product catalog microservice or any other microservices in the application.
This makes it easier to release new features to your users more quickly and to respond to feedback from your users more quickly.
Challenges faced when implementing Microservice Architectures
Complexity:
Microservices architecture can be more complex to implement and manage than monolithic architecture. This is because microservices-based applications have more moving parts. For example, you need to manage the deployment and scaling of each microservice, as well as the communication between microservices.Communication overhead:
Microservices communicate with each other through APIs. This can add overhead to the performance of microservices-based applications. However, there are a number of ways to reduce communication overhead, such as using caching and load balancing.Observability:
It can be difficult to monitor and troubleshoot microservices-based applications because they are made up of many different services. You need to collect metrics and logs from each microservice in order to get a complete picture of what is happening in your application. There are a number of tools and techniques that can help you to monitor and troubleshoot microservices-based applications, such as service discovery, tracing, and distributed logging.
Overall, microservices architecture offers a number of benefits for web applications, including scalability, maintainability, resilience, and agility. However, it is important to note that microservices architecture can be more complex to implement and manage than monolithic architecture.
Emerging trends in microservices architecture
Serverless computing
Serverless computing is a cloud computing model in which the cloud provider manages the server infrastructure. This allows developers to focus on writing code without having to worry about managing servers. Serverless computing is a good fit for microservices architecture because it can help to reduce the operational overhead of running microservices.
With serverless computing, developers only pay for the resources that they use, which can lead to significant cost savings. Serverless computing also makes it easy to scale microservices-based applications up or down as needed.
Some examples of serverless computing providers include AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, and Google Cloud Functions.
Service mesh
A service mesh is a layer of infrastructure that provides services to microservices such as load balancing, service discovery, and fault tolerance. Service meshes can help to simplify the development and management of microservices-based applications.
Service meshes can be used to improve the reliability and performance of microservices-based applications. They can also help to make microservices-based applications more secure.
Some examples of service mesh providers include Istio, Linkerd, and Consul.
Event-driven microservices architecture
Event-driven microservices architecture is a type of microservices architecture that uses events to communicate between microservices. This type of architecture makes it easy to develop loosely coupled microservices that can respond to events in real time.
Event-driven microservices architecture is well-suited for applications that need to be highly scalable and responsive. It is also a good choice for applications that need to be able to process large volumes of data in real time.
Some examples of event-driven microservices architecture include streaming applications, complex event processing systems, and real-time analytics systems.
Containerization
Containerization is a technology that allows developers to package an application and its dependencies into a container. Containers are lightweight and portable, making them ideal for microservices.
Containerization can help to improve the efficiency of microservices-based applications by reducing the overhead of deploying and managing microservices. It can also help to make microservices-based applications more scalable and reliable.
Some examples of containerization platforms include Docker, Kubernetes, and Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS).
DevOps
DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development and IT operations. It can help to streamline the development and deployment of microservices-based applications.
DevOps practices can help to improve the quality and reliability of microservices-based applications. They can also help to reduce the time it takes to develop and deploy new features.
Some examples of DevOps tools and practices include continuous integration, continuous delivery, and infrastructure as code.
Conclusion
Microservices architecture can be a great way to develop and deploy scalable, reliable, and maintainable web applications. However, it is important to choose the right microservices architecture for your specific needs.
There are many factors to consider when choosing a microservices architecture, such as the complexity of your application, the scalability requirements, the maintainability requirements, and the resilience requirements.
If you are not sure which microservices architecture is right for your web application, we recommend that you consult with an experienced software architect. GeekyAnts is a leading software development company with expertise in microservices architecture. We can help you choose the right microservices architecture for your web application and help you implement it successfully.
Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you with your microservices architecture needs.
