Microservices explained - the What, Why and How?

Summary

This video delves into the transition from monolithic to microservices architecture, highlighting the challenges faced by monoliths such as scalability issues and deployment complexities. It explains microservices as a solution, breaking down applications into smaller, independent services that communicate via APIs, message brokers, or service meshes. The video also discusses code management strategies for microservices, comparing monorepo and polyrepo approaches, and touches on tools like Kubernetes and HashiCorp's offerings to simplify microservices deployment and management.

Takeaways

• 🏗️ Traditional monolithic applications are developed as a single unit, which can lead to challenges in scaling and managing complex codebases.
• 🚀 The industry's shift towards microservices architecture aims to address the limitations of monolithic applications by breaking them into smaller, manageable services.
• 🔍 Microservices allow for independent development, deployment, and scaling of application components, enhancing flexibility and reducing infrastructure costs.
• 🤝 Services in a microservices architecture communicate through APIs, message brokers, or service meshes, facilitating both synchronous and asynchronous interactions.
• 🛠️ A key characteristic of microservices is loose coupling, where each service operates independently without tight dependencies on others.
• 🛑 The transition to microservices introduces new challenges, such as managing service communication and maintaining service health across a distributed system.
• 🛠️ Tools like Kubernetes and HashiCorp's suite of products are designed to ease the complexities of managing and deploying microservices.
• 📚 The video emphasizes the importance of understanding CI/CD pipelines for microservices, which is crucial for frequent and reliable deployments.
• 🗂️ Code management for microservices can be approached with either a monorepo or polyrepo strategy, each with its own set of advantages and disadvantages.
• 🔑 Decisions on repository structure should consider factors like team size, service independence, and the need for shared resources across services.

Q & A

What is a monolithic application architecture?

A monolithic application architecture is a design where all the components of an application, such as user authentication, shopping cart, product catalog, and more, are part of a single unit with all the code in one codebase, developed, deployed, and scaled as one unit.

What challenges are associated with monolithic architecture?

Challenges with monolithic architecture include difficulty in coordinating between teams, inability to scale parts of the application independently leading to higher infrastructure costs, issues with managing dependencies of third-party modules, and longer release cycles due to the need to test and build the entire application for any changes.

Why did the industry move towards microservices architecture?

The industry moved towards microservices architecture to address the challenges of monolithic architecture, such as the need for better scalability, flexibility, easier management of dependencies, and faster release cycles.

What is microservices architecture?

Microservices architecture is an approach where an application is broken down into multiple smaller, independent services that can be developed, deployed, and scaled separately. Each service is a self-contained unit that performs a specific business function.

What are the best practices for breaking down an application into microservices?

The best practice is to break down the application based on business functionalities rather than technical functionalities, ensuring each microservice does one isolated thing, and that they are self-contained and independent from each other.

How do microservices communicate with each other?

Microservices can communicate with each other through API calls, where each service has an endpoint to accept requests, or through a message broker for asynchronous communication, or using a service mesh which handles communication logic externally.

What is the difference between monorepo and polyrepo for managing microservices code?

Monorepo is a single repository for all microservices, making code management easier, while polyrepo involves separate repositories for each microservice, providing better isolation and potentially simpler CI/CD pipelines.

What are the advantages of using a monorepo for microservices?

The advantages of a monorepo include simplified code management with a single repository, easier sharing of common code across services, and a single point of management for the entire application.

What are the disadvantages of using a monorepo for microservices?

Disadvantages of a monorepo include the potential for tight coupling between services, slower cloning and pushing due to the large project size, and the risk of one service's issues affecting others due to a single main branch.

What are the advantages of using a polyrepo for microservices?

Advantages of a polyrepo include complete isolation of services, smaller codebases for easier cloning and management, and independent CI/CD pipelines for each service.

What are the disadvantages of using a polyrepo for microservices?

Disadvantages of a polyrepo include the complexity of managing multiple repositories, difficulty in working on features affecting multiple services simultaneously, and the inability to share files across projects without duplication.