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How do microservices work?
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What is a cloud
microservice?
Historically, software was developed using monolithic architectures. However, as software complexities increased exponentially, these monolithic systems struggled with scalability. Installing updates required careful planning and often resulted in downtime, with limited flexibility to customize individual components beyond a few settings.
Cloud microservices represent an architectural method for developing software applications as distributed, independently deployable modules, each managing specific functions. These services communicate through well-defined APIs, making applications more scalable and adaptable than traditional monolithic approaches. Microservices allow services to be developed, deployed, and managed independently while still supporting the overall performance of the application.
With cloud-based scalability, the number of running instances of any microservice can be adjusted without constraint. This architecture also enables faster development and release cycles, allowing new features and innovations to reach the market far quicker than legacy systems. For example, updates can be deployed weekly without disrupting the user experience, in stark contrast to the rigid schedules of the past.
Orbits utilizes this cloud microservices approach to offer flexibility, agility, and unmatched scalability, ensuring that applications are always evolving to meet modern demands.

What problems do cloud microservices solve?
As applications become more extensive and complex, the traditional monolithic approach to enterprise software development has proven problematic and inefficient. Over time, adding new features to monolithic systems has led to a web of interdependencies, increasing complexity, lengthening development and testing cycles, and multiplying software bugs.
Cloud microservices offer an architectural solution to these issues by breaking down complex applications into a distributed set of independently deployable modules, each managed by a small, focused development team. Unlike monolithic systems, microservices allow each component to be designed independently using optimized technology stacks specific to that service. This makes adding or removing features simpler, enables bug fixes in near real-time, and allows updates to be deployed independently, without any disruption to the rest of the application.
One of the key strengths of cloud microservices is resilience. In a microservices-based system, the failure of one service does not impact the others, reducing the risk of total system downtime. This inherent resilience, combined with the ability to independently scale each microservice as needed, ensures the application remains flexible, responsive, and performant.
Compared to traditional monolithic structures, cloud microservices architecture provides several distinct advantages:
- Flexibility: Independently designed services reduce complexity and interdependencies.
- Scalability: Services can scale elastically without requiring significant hardware investments.
- Resilience and Programmability: The failure of one service doesn’t disrupt others, and complete API programmability ensures seamless communication between services.
- Efficiency: Each service can leverage the best possible technology stack, improving efficiency.
- Agility and Ease of Deployment: Features can be added or upgraded quickly, and updates can be rolled out in near real-time without causing network disruptions.
Orbits harnesses the power of cloud microservices to deliver flexibility, agility, and unmatched scalability, ensuring that applications meet and exceed modern demands while continuously evolving.
How do cloud microservices work?
Microservices architecture structures an application as a collection of small, loosely coupled and independently deployable services. Each service is designed to perform a specific business capability and can communicate with other services through well-defined APIs.
When to migrate a monolithic application to microservices
Adopting a microservices architecture when you are already successfully operating a monolithic application involves a substantial investment from your team. Different engineering teams may interpret and implement microservices principles in various ways, resulting in unique outcomes regarding the size and number of microservices required.
To determine whether microservices are the right approach for your application, it is crucial to first identify the key business objectives or pain points you aim to address. There might be simpler alternatives to achieve your goals or resolve the issues you’ve identified. For example, if your primary goal is to scale your application more rapidly, implementing autoscaling might be a more efficient solution. Similarly, if you are encountering bugs in production, starting with the implementation of unit tests and continuous integration (CI) could effectively address these problems.
If you conclude that a microservice approach is the most suitable way to achieve your objectives, a recommended strategy is to begin by extracting a single service from the monolith. Develop, test, and deploy this service in production to gain practical experience. For more detailed guidance, refer to the next document in this series, Refactor a Monolith into Microservices. Once you have successfully extracted and deployed one service, proceed to extract additional services, learning and refining your approach with each cycle.
The microservices architecture pattern involves decomposing a system into a set of independently deployable services. In contrast to developing a monolithic application, which requires coordination among large teams and can lead to slower software development, implementing a microservices architecture enables small, autonomous teams to work in parallel. This parallelism can significantly accelerate the development process.
In the upcoming document in this series, Refactor a Monolith into Microservices, you will explore various strategies for transitioning a monolithic application into a microservices-based architecture. This will provide you with the necessary insights and methodologies to effectively manage the refactoring process and fully leverage the benefits of microservices.
