Applying Microservices Architecture: Pros and Cons

Microservices solutions are a style of software development that involves breaking a monolith of a system into separate components, which are independent services. Each individual service is designed to perform relatively simple functions: the operation of the application is tested in real-time, tracking technical elements and business characteristics. Services have clear physical boundaries which makes them scalable, making it possible to use different programming languages for writing. The required changes are made without affecting the entire application.

Microservices are gaining more and more popular among developers. They are good for large Internet projects serving a large number of users. If there is a failure in one service, then the rest will calmly continue their work: this is very important for large and complex systems. With innovations, you can simply write a new service, it will easily fit into the entire system, and you do not have to deal with compatibility issues. Moreover, the work can include several independent teams using different programming languages.

You can transform your organization and modernize your systems with Sumerge’s microservices solutions to enable enterprises to seamlessly transition into the digital age by providing end-to-end IT infrastructure transformation. Microservices solutions can be used to create cloud apps, change legacy systems, and improve integration methods.

Monolithic systems integrate all of an application’s services into a single process, which is subsequently replicated over many servers. The microservices architecture for each service has a separate package, and they are also stored on different servers – isolated from each other, duplicated if necessary. This allows you to work on each functional piece independently.

The advantages of microservices have proven strong enough for big corporate players like Amazon, Netflix, or eBay to integrate them into their systems.

Benefits of a microservices adoption

High fault tolerance: if one service fails, the others continue to function. Thus, failures in separate services will not disrupt the overall operation.

Flexibility: you can easily try to implement new technology. It will be much faster, and if it fails, it will be simple to reverse the changes. By changing one of the services locally, we do not risk the entire system and the time required for changes is reduced.

Simplicity: the less code, the easier it is for programmers to figure out what works and how.

Ease of bringing the written code to work. Fast deployment is possible thanks to a small amount of code.

Scalability: the most necessary services can be supplemented and expanded as needed. The entire system remains the same.

Over time, small problems can lead to serious ones. Therefore, timely, and in the case of microservices, continuous monitoring is essential. Monitoring a microservice architecture is much more difficult to configure and more expensive to maintain than monitoring a monolithic application.

Both monolithic and microservice architectures can’t avoid application failures. An important principle when creating an application on microservices is the assumption that system failures will occur sooner or later. And with this initial assumption, an application is created.

The code must be thoroughly tested before being released to production. However, there is always the possibility that some mistakes will be overlooked. It is for such cases that the chaos testing system was invented. Errors and problems are created automatically and deliberately in order to study them in advance and come up with a quick solution or a way to prevent them.

The cloud-based nature of microservices and the underlying virtualization have a major advantage – scalability. Each service performs a specific function, all services are relatively small – all of these characteristics of the architecture make scaling easier and more painless.

Microservices are less suited to be used as an architecture for developing enterprise information systems. In this version, we will get an overly complex system from the point of view of operation and maintenance. And the increased operational costs will not pay off from the benefits of using a microservice architecture, since they will not fully manifest themselves within one, even a large organization.

The main area of effective use of microservices is large Internet services that work in real-time for a large number of users.