5 Prerequisites To Know Before Adopting Microservices

Be aware and prepared before a roadblock occurs

Photo by Alexander Popov on Unsplash.

Microservices is one most common architectural patterns to build highly scalable, distributed applications. This pattern describes delivering the system via small, independently releasable services. A service provides functionality over the network (typically via APIs).

The Google Trend below clearly shows rising interest in the topic over the last 5-6 years:

Google Trend — Micro services. Screenshot by the author.

I have seen many teams jump into microservice migration without truly understanding the trade-offs.

In this article, I will discuss some common pitfalls you should be aware of before jumping into microservices.

Benefits of Building Microservices

Many of you have likely read multiple articles, books talking about the benefits of microservices, and personally experienced many of these. Here is a quick refresher on why to build microservices:

• Microservices are easy to deploy.
• You are free to use the most suitable technology stack for each service. It does not force you to stick to particular technology even if it is not the right fit.
• Multiple developers/teams can work independently, promoting faster, parallel development.
• They promote loose coupling amongst the services, as services typically interact with each other over the network/HTTP.

Now let’s look at the pre-flight checklist before boarding the microservices flight.

Failures Are Inevitable

When you build a system comprised of microservices, keep in mind that networks are going to be slow/faulty. Different services might be up/down at different times. Therefore, you need to build services with failures in mind.

Luckily, there are patterns like the circuit breaker that can help get over these failures and let the system work in degraded mode.