Service Discovery is a key pattern in microservice architectures, where services need to find each other dynamically. Unlike monolithic applications, where all components are contained within a single executable, microservices are distributed across multiple instances, often across different servers, virtual machines, or containers. Service discovery simplifies the way these services locate one another, allowing for load balancing, failover, and flexibility.
What is Service Discovery?
Service Discovery refers to the process by which services in a distributed system dynamically find each other. Instead of hard-coding the addresses of service instances (which can change in a dynamic environment like Kubernetes), services register themselves with a centralized service registry. Other services query this registry to find the addresses of the services they need to communicate with.
Benefits:
- Scalability: New instances of services can be added dynamically.
- Load Balancing: Requests can be routed to different instances of the same service.
- Fault Tolerance: Dead services can be automatically removed from the registry.
Types of Service Discovery:
Client-Side Discovery
In client-side service discovery, the client directly queries the service registry to discover service instances and choose one to send a request to. This method requires the client to implement the logic for discovery and load balancing.
