Software Development Updates

Microservices are a popular practice in software development companies because they provide many benefits and simplify the development of complex applications. The MarketsandMarkets Research says that the cloud microservices market has grown from $683 million in 2018 to $1,880 million in 2023, with a CAGR of 22.4%. Nowadays, many businesses prefer to adopt microservices over monolithic architecture. It allows companies to build flexible, and scalable systems with reduced costs. Such advantages attract enterprises to choose it, but implementing this architectural pattern is not easy. But there are some challenges in microservices architecture execution. 

If you fail to address these challenges, it might become a very costly mistake that could lead to a project or even business failure. This article will prepare you for the possible challenges of working with the microservices architecture. 

1. What Is a Microservice?

Microservices are a set of small, independent services that are loosely coupled to form a fully functioning application. Organized around business capabilities, each service represents a specific business requirement and performs a specific function.

It is easy to deploy, update, and scale microservices quickly. Microservices use APIs to communicate with each other. If you are working on serverless computing, cloud-native applications, or apps that rely on container deployment, then Microservices is an ideal option. You can implement microservices architecture using various types of programming languages. 

Although microservices architectures are more complex than the traditional ones, they reduce development time and runtime dependencies between services and customers if implemented correctly.

2. Top Microservices Challenges

When implementing microservices architecture for your application, you may face some challenges such as: 

2.1 Design Complexity

Designing microservices applications is more complex than monolithic apps. Microservices are a set of small services that are developed and deployed independently. The challenge here lies in designing these microservices. Each service is built to perform a specific task, so every microservice represents a specific aspect of the business domain or technical requirement. 

With so much hassle, there is no doubt designing a single microservice is a challenging process. Although different teams are handling different services, dealing with microservices remains difficult.

Solution: To design a microservice effectively, you must have clarity on a specific responsibility you assign to it. This starts by determining the bounded context for the given microservice. And for that, you must have a thorough understanding of the relevant topic. 

2.2 Inconsistent Data 

In microservices, each service manages its data. While each service might not have a dedicated database, it still has ownership over the data it requires. So, any changes in the schema would lead to cascading changes in the microservices due to various independent storage solutions. 

This independent data handling leads to data duplication, synchronization, and redundancy issues. Traditional data management principles and techniques are not effective in solving these issues.

Solution: It would require much effort to leverage solutions like event sourcing, event journaling and recovery, and more to achieve data consistency. 

2.3 Security

Security is indeed a serious concern when dealing with microservice architecture. Microservices deploy data in multi-cloud environments which gives a larger surface area for cyber attacks. The lack of control and visibility over app components makes it more vulnerable. Testing these microservices for vulnerability is also very difficult because they use infrastructure layers for communication. 

In distributed systems, data remains distributed, making it complicated to maintain the privacy, integrity, and confidentiality of the user data. Moreover, setting up access controls and implementing secure authentication for each service is not only challenging within a distributed framework but also increases the attack surface significantly. 

Most microservices fail to adhere to basic security protocols, leaving the system completely vulnerable. You can find most of the security problems in your microservices system using a Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) or a Static Application Security Testing (SAST) scan.

Solution: It is recommended that standard microservices have a service mesh such as ISTIO for security. In addition to that, your microservices should implement key rotation, key externalization, and complexity mandates with centralized security storage like Vault.

2.4 Operational Complexity

A microservices application consists of multiple independent services. Every microservices team utilizes independent tools, technologies, and approaches to develop and deploy their service. Moreover, these services manage their own data and are hosted on different servers. 

Although this helps create a flexible and scalable system, it does hinder the operational capabilities of the system. If there is a spike in app usage, things can take a turn bad real soon. That is why establishing clear communication and coordination between these services is necessary, but that part is also very challenging. 

Though the failure of one component doesn’t affect the functionality of the entire system, it does disrupt the workflow of a relevant business operation. 

Solution: While creating microservices, ensure that each service is resilient enough to internal and external failures. You can solve the operational complexities by setting up a robust messaging infrastructure with a good API management and monitoring approach. 

2.5 Requires Expertise

Building a microservices system demands expertise in both the technical arena and the business domain. Since every service in the system represents different aspects of the business operation, having a deep understanding of the subdomain is essential to create boundaries for these services. 

On the other hand, every service is developed independently. In many cases, each team uses different technologies and programming languages to create them. On top of that, each service is deployed and hosted on different servers, managing its data through different databases. 

Solution: Developers should possess experience working in a distributed environment, as well as be well-versed with various technologies used in the project. And since multiple teams are working in collaboration, a keen understanding of DevOps practices is essential. On top of that, developers should be skilled in building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines. 

2.6 Maintenance

Different technologies and programming languages are used in building multiple services in the system. So, maintaining these services also involves managing these varied toolkits as well. This makes the maintenance process costly, complex, and overwhelming. 

Maintenance is carried out to ensure that your microservices-based application functions at its best. It’s a continuous operation. Services can become slow, outdated, or even break down over time, which can impact the performance of your application. Therefore, microservices must be monitored and maintained constantly. 

Solution: Developers should have a backup plan or a recovery plan in place in case their service fails. In this scenario, they must be aware of all the failure modes and scenarios.

If rigorous checking protocols are implemented in the maintenance of microservices, then it helps reduce the risks of security breaches and data loss.

2.7 Complex Team Communications

Communication between teams becomes easy when using a monolithic app, but the scenario flips over completely in the case of microservices. The complexities in communication increase with the number of services in the microservices systems. 

Solution: Proper documentation is one of the solutions that can help you resolve the issues of poor team communication.

2.8 Complex System Communications

For optimal performance, effective communication between services is a must. Microservices use APIs to communicate with each other due to variations in building and hosting using different technologies. Resource sharing in microservices is possible with the infrastructure layer, requiring configuration for effective communication. This configuration defines the way services should communicate, including expected responses, error handling, request options, security, and serialization. 

Solution: Establishing communication is quite difficult in microservices. Therefore, it is crucial to use an architectural pattern that allows secure, fast, and reliable service-to-service communication for your microservices system. 

Maintaining effective communication is also as important as establishing it. Proper configuration will help you with that too. However poor configuration will lead to increased latency and reduced speed of calls across various services. 

3. When Not to Use Microservices Architecture?

Since Netflix announced that they have over 700 microservices running on their platform, companies are eager to take advantage of them. However, many of them fail to notice that microservices may have worked for Uber and Netflix, but it’s not an appropriate solution for everyone. 

Microservices is a very complex approach to software development that demands too much effort on your part.  The further decision to use microservices should be the best for your specific requirements. But, here are a few instances when it’s not ideal to use microservices. 

3.1 When You Have a Small Team

If you don’t have a large team or different teams to manage the workload of different services, then there will be too much workload on the same team. This will cause a delay in the project as well as cost you efficiency. 

It can be overwhelming for a single team to develop and maintain hundreds of microservices. It would be okay if the number of microservices are relatively very low, allowing a single team to manage them easily. Even in those cases, problems may arise when a team member leaves or is unavailable for work. 

Working with small teams on microservices takes too much of your valuable time. This approach is not effective either. 

3.2 When You Have a Small or Simple App

Why do you use microservices? Because your app might be just too big or complex to work all at once. Therefore, you break down the entire system into multiple services. Consequently, it doesn’t make sense to adopt the microservices architecture for small or simple applications. 

You break down the codebase of your application into several pieces to make it simple and easily maintainable. A small or simple app will have a rather straightforward code. In such cases, you neither have a reason to further break it down, nor it would be of any use. Thus, it is advisable not to use microservices when working on simple and small applications. 

3.3 When You Are Working On a Startup or a New Product

Building a startup or a new product requires constant changes through an iterative process. It is essential due to having an imperfect idea that needs to be polished and then tested in the market for its viability. In such cases, using microservices will not be ideal. 

You have to fix a business domain before you get started with the microservices. But, when working with a new product or startup, you might have to pivot domain models multiple times. Making multiple changes in microservice boundaries would be very expensive. 

Even if you have a large and complex app for a startup or as a new product, then it is recommended that you refrain from using microservices until the domain model for your app is stabilized. It’s better to start with a modular monolithic approach and once you stabilize your domain model, gradually migrate it to the microservices. This kind of architecture is for building scalable and flexible applications. For startups, it’s often uncertain whether their app will gain success or not. 

3.4 When Your Domain is Unclear

If you are not sure about the business domain model for your application, it’s best not to move forward with microservices. Because redesigning the business domain will be very expensive.

The process of implementing microservices starts with determining the business domain and then breaking it down into various subdomains. After that, you assign each subdomain a specific responsibility within a bounded context. Then you have to set up proper communication between these services which allows your app to function well. 

If you haven’t decided on your business domain model yet, it will be crucial to proceed further with other aspects of your project. You need to clear the first stage and then move on to another. Otherwise, you will find yourself in cyclical changes that drain your money and other resources as well as cause delays. Start by deciding on a business domain model for your app and then consider whether your app truly needs a microservices architecture. 

3.5 When Efficiency isn’t Guaranteed 

The whole process of developing microservices, as discussed in the previous point, dictates that building and maintaining microservices requires a lot of effort and resources. It is supposed to help you develop an app with increased efficiency and reduced costs in the long-term capacity. 

Therefore, before starting with your project, make sure to conduct due diligence that determines whether putting in all those efforts is truly worthwhile. 

The main purpose of using microservice is to break down the complexities of the system and increase its overall efficiency. If that purpose can’t be achieved, then it may not be suitable for your project. 

4. Conclusion 

Effective implementation of microservices architecture patterns is very complex. You may face a multitude of challenges, ranging from design complexity to inter-service communication. Although we didn’t cover all possible obstacles, we did analyze and provide solutions for the most common challenges in microservices. We also discussed the use cases in which you shall not use microservices, as it could lead to project failure. 

We hope this article helps you identify the right instances for using microservices and resolve issues along the way. If you have any queries regarding microservices, then feel free to share them in the comment section below. We will get back to you with appropriate solutions.

FAQs 

Is performance monitoring a challenge in microservices?

There are a plethora of independent services in a microservice architecture. Most often, they are built using different technologies and are distributed across multiple systems. Therefore, monitoring microservices performance in such a distributed environment is quite challenging. 

Are microservices difficult?

Microservices are a complex architectural pattern. They consist of several independent services loosely coupled together to build a fully functioning application. Designing these microservices requires a deep understanding of the business domain. Moreover, establishing communication between these services is also a tricky job.   

Why testing is difficult in microservices?

Even if a service is supposed to be a part of an elaborate system, it is still developed and tested independently using various technologies. Moreover, these services are often deployed and hosted on different servers. Because of this distributed nature, testing becomes difficult in microservices. 

What is one of the major valid challenges in microservices?

One of the major challenges in microservices had to be the complexities involved in designing the services. Microservices are modeled on a specific business domain where each service represents a different aspect of that domain. The boundaries of those services are specified by providing relevant bounded contexts. To achieve this, you need to have a deep understanding of business domain expertise as well as the technicalities of building an app relevant to its business requirements.