There comes a point when a company encounters its growth opportunities and realizes that its current systems are no longer sufficient. This doesn't always happen in SMEs, but when success grows quickly, the need to scale up can suddenly become clear. How do you approach that? This is a question many entrepreneurs ask themselves, but one that many developers also struggle with. Scalability and flexibility are often the key to being able to act in time and continue the success.
For more and more entrepreneurs looking to scale their custom software, the microservices architecture is the solution that is increasingly being adopted. Microservices offer a new way to set up and scale web applications, playing a crucial role in improving flexibility and the ability to respond quickly to growth. But what makes microservices different from the traditional monolithic web applications that were previously the norm?
In a traditional, monolithic web application, all functionality resides in a single codebase. Whether it's user management, content management, or payments, everything is tied together within the same system. This means that the different components of the application run under the same architecture, making it difficult to scale or maintain parts independently. When changes or updates are needed, the entire application must be modified or rolled out, which can lead to longer downtime and limited flexibility. This is a challenge for businesses that want to respond to changes or growth but may not always have the resources or time to renew the entire application.
In contrast to the monolithic approach, a microservices architecture consists of multiple, independent services. Each service is responsible for a specific task, such as user management, content management, or payments. These services can be developed, tested, and deployed independently. This not only offers scalability advantages, but also allows working with different technologies for different services, depending on what works best for the specific task.
What makes microservices different?
One of the biggest advantages of microservices is the ability to scale them individually. Imagine you have a website that offers both user management and content management. If user registration grows quickly, the User Management Microservice can be scaled independently by adding more server capacity or database space, without affecting the Content Management Microservice. This allows for more efficient resource use and a faster response to changing load.
In a monolithic application, if the same growth in user registrations occurs, you would need to scale the entire application. This means you would need to expand server capacity and database space for the entire application, even though only the user management processes are heavily loaded. This is more expensive and less efficient.
How do microservices work with different technologies?
Another advantage of microservices is that they can be technologically independent. In a monolithic application, you're often tied to a single programming language and technology stack. With microservices, each service can be built in a different language or technology, depending on the needs of the service. For example:
- The User Management Microservice could be built in PHP, with data stored in a MySQL database.
- The Content Management Microservice could be built in Node.js, using a NoSQL database like MongoDB for flexible content storage.
This flexibility makes microservices ideal for businesses that want to take advantage of the best technologies for specific functionalities, without being locked into one stack for the entire system.
Independence and scaling
Microservices typically run on separate servers or containers, which means they can be hosted independently of each other. This provides many advantages when it comes to scaling the application. Instead of scaling the entire application to provide more capacity for a specific functionality, you can scale a particular microservice individually. This is especially useful when you have a spike in user registration, but the rest of the application doesn't experience the same load.
Microservices can also be hosted serverless, where they only run when needed, which can be cost-effective for services that don't need to be continuously active. Using container technologies like Docker, you can efficiently manage and scale microservices, often on a platform like Kubernetes that automatically handles scaling based on demand.
How do microservices communicate with each other?
Microservices typically communicate with each other via APIs. A common approach is to use an API Gateway, which acts as a single entry point for all microservices. Through this gateway, different services such as user management, content management, and payments can communicate and work together without the user noticing. This means that a website offering registration, login, and content display, for example, can use multiple microservices, each handling a specific task.
Since these microservices communicate via APIs, it’s possible to use a single domain name for all microservices (e.g., api.website.com). This avoids CORS issues because the communication happens within the same domain structure.
The benefits of microservices
- Scalability: Microservices can be scaled independently, which is cost-effective and provides more flexibility in managing load spikes.
- Independence: Each microservice is independent, meaning that maintaining or modifying one service does not affect the rest of the system.
- Flexibility in technology: Microservices can be built in different programming languages and technologies, depending on what works best for the task.
- Faster development: Because microservices essentially form a small ecosystem, they can be developed more quickly, leading to a faster time-to-market for new functionalities. Each service is compact and more manageable within the whole.
With our custom software solutions, we closely follow the latest developments in microservices. The possibilities of microservices offer significant advantages for custom software. We look forward to exploring how this approach can strengthen your projects and make them future-proof.