Microservices are data-engineering approaches that help reduce the human requirements for maintenance. Many DevOps departments suffer from chronic understaffing, but employees can manage a network with smaller teams and less overtime with microservice architectures. 

Understanding how microservice architectures work

Businesses often rely on API Gateways to give customers access to platforms. 

Within the platforms are small services that employees can manage, like current orders and wish lists. These are microservices. Microservices split up API functions and delegate them to smaller groups rather than having the entire host of services under one team’s roof. 

Businesses can decide whether microservices use a collective database or have their own unique ones. Trailblazing, tech-forward entrepreneurs can also opt to have databases interact with one another. Hoping to cash in on the benefits of microservice architectures? Turn to microservice architectures like Akka Platform from Lightbend that use compartmentalization to increase employee effectiveness and create better fault testing. 

How do microservices help businesses scale?

Businesses can use microservices to scale components individually. For example, developers who need to work on a system’s registration process can update it in isolation without compromising the rest of the app. 

By updating one area of the API at a time, developers can scale accordingly without rising significant downtime. 

How do microservices reduce testing conflicts?

Just like microservices can scale parts of an API independently, microservice architecture also allows developers to test and update one part of their application at a time. Developers can avoid a single point of failure tanking the entire application by splitting each service into its niche. 

Establishing microservices can be time-consuming at first. That upfront time pays off when individual techs need to work on one subset rather than the entire monolith. Testing and repairing a microservice consumes less time than shutting down, testing, and relaunching API as a whole. 

When organizing microservice architectures, each autonomous team takes care of its designated services. Team members can make necessary changes without having to consult with other groups. These teams can specialize in their architectures, making development more efficient at all stages of scaling. 

How microservices reduce the number of failure points

In a monolithic system, the single application supporting everything can fail, bringing down the entire system. However, if one microservice fails, the other systems remain functional, protecting the business’s productivity. 

Having a single point of failure reduces the risk of the entire system shutting down and affecting the business. It also means the problem is easier to spot, as it’s isolated to its microservice. 

Microservices need each other

Despite microservices having unique teams and functionality, they do rely on each other. Businesses cannot function with one microservice, so the individual functions need to interact. Just like a team of working professionals, no one microservice can do the entire job by itself.

This communication is suitable for your network, but it also means you should keep your microservice architecture as streamlined as possible. Otherwise, you may risk overwhelming the microservices in internal communications, slowing your API. 

Wrap-up

Technology is at its best when it enhances cooperation between humans. With the right balance of microservice architectures and teamwork, you can separate your API knot into easy-to-manage strings.