With ever-changing consumer demands, organizations face new challenges every day, and their tech architecture needs to keep up with them. The monolithic design was once very prevalent, but microservices architecture has replaced it. Monolithic architecture is bulky (container-like structure), has tightly coupled components, has many functional dependencies and lacks speed, agility, and concurrency. In addition, with every application update, the entire architecture needs redeployment. 

  Enter 'The Microservices Architecture' - the savior! The microservice architecture is service-oriented and consists of tiny, self-contained services that disseminate via an API. Microservice architecture design is easy to deploy and build, and size is not an issue here. Furthermore, there is no need to redeploy the entire architecture when a new update occurs.   

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Core Components of Microservices Architecture  

Microservices Architecture is a collection of small, fine-grained, lightweight, autonomous, and loosely coupled services. Let us take a closer look at its core components for more clarity.  

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• Microservices: The entire application splits up into tiny (independent) services. Teams can more easily implement, deploy, and upgrade small independent services.  
• Containers: Containers are the encapsulating units for services and their dependencies. Containers are not vital, but they can help reduce deployment time and enhance application efficiency by sharing OS and middleware components. Containers are easily deployable when needed without affecting application performance. They can also facilitate microservice reconfiguration in the event of a failure. 
• Service mesh: The service mesh facilitates communication by establishing a dynamic message layer. For communication, this gadget employs a sidecar pattern. Each service has its container for sidecars. The sidecar initiates contact with the other sidecar to establish service communication and redirects incoming and outgoing traffic.  
• Service discovery: Service discovery aids in the management of services. It aids in customizing on-demand deployment and appropriately spreading the load among microservices. It consists of three components: the service provider, the service registry, and the service consumer.  

• API gateway: The API gateway is a critical component in Microservices architecture because it is responsible for communication between microservices and clients. It analyses incoming and outgoing traffic, monitors communication, and does load balancing when necessary. An API gateway can also speed up communication by filtering different communication protocols. It contains built-in security mechanisms that aid in the detection of any intruder.  

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Advantages of Using Microservices Architecture  

When Walmart decided to move to Microservices architecture, the inability to handle 6 million page views per minute and a poor user experience were the triggers. This gives a great idea of what advantages Microservices Architecture offers. Let us have a look at some of these advantages:

• Adaptability: Microservices design encompasses autonomous services that are easily feasible, as we all know now. As a result, it can easily adjust to ever-increasing market demands.  
• Cost-Effective: Microservices architecture provides self-contained services that are easily scalable and pliable. As a result, instead of expanding the entire architecture, the service is scaled up in response to market demand resulting in cost savings.  
• Time-Effective: Discrete service scalability is time-efficient compared to scaling the entire system.  
• Maintenance: In a microservices architecture, if one component fails, there is no need to redeploy the entire architecture; instead, just that component is taken care of without affecting the others. As a result, it is simple to maintain and troubleshoot.  
• Diversity: Considering the sort of service, microservice architecture can employ any technology (one, two, or more).  

• Agility: Since microservices operate independently, they are easy to manage. If something goes wrong after an update, the best alternative is always to roll back.  

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Disadvantages of Using Microservices Architecture  

The advantages and disadvantages are two sides of the same coin. Nothing in this world can have only advantages or disadvantages. Here are some of the disadvantages of Microservices Architecture.  

• Complex: Microservices are small, self-contained services that require a lot of effort, tactical planning, and clear communication to run efficiently.  
• Testing: Small separate services add to the architecture's complexity, and it can sometimes make testing and monitoring difficult.  
• Work culture: Microservices are ineffective without a proper work culture, which includes adequate automation procedures, DevOps culture, Scrum meetings, and so on.  
• Security: Because of the massive data interchange among the services, dealing with microservices architecture poses several security issues in many cases.    

Microservices architecture helps companies build complex and functional software products, making the hit to the market scalable and profitable. 

If you are interested in Microservices Architecture , contact us today at marketing@codvo.ai !

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