Can anyone please tell me some of the disadvantages of a microservice architecture.
What is Microservices?
Microservices is a method of software development which packages an application as a set of loosely-coupled services with light-weight protocols for communication. Basically, it is a set of services that work independently to contribute to a user-defined task. Here, each business task is handled by a service that works independently with a dedicated server.
It borrows its architectural style from the Service-Oriented Architecture.
Note: Service-Oriented Architecture is a design of software development where services are provided by the application components to other components through network protocols.
Disadvantages of a microservice architecture?
Microservices are also popularly known as Microservice Architecture. Every service in the application is an independent, self-contained service and they implement single business capability. Microservices may be a hot trend, but the architecture does have drawbacks. In general, the main negative of microservices is the complexity that any distributed system has.
**Communication between services is complex: **
Since everything is now an independent service, you have to carefully handle requests traveling between your modules. In one such scenario, developers may be forced to write extra code to avoid disruption. Over time, complications will arise when remote calls experience latency.
**More services equals more resources: **
Multiple databases and transaction management can be painful. Global testing is difficult: Testing a microservices-based application can be cumbersome. In a monolithic approach, we would just need to launch our WAR on an application server and ensure its connectivity with the underlying database. With microservices, each dependent service needs to be confirmed before testing can occur.
**Debugging problems can be harder: **
Each service has its own set of logs to go through. Log, logs, and more logs. Deployment challengers: The product may need coordination among multiple services, which may not be as straightforward as deploying a WAR in a container.
**Large vs small product companies: **
Microservices are great for large companies, but can be slower to implement and too complicated for small companies who need to create and iterate quickly, and don’t want to get bogged down in complex orchestration. Of course, with the right kind of automation and tools and the properly trained staff, all the above drawbacks can be addressed.