What is a MICROSERVICE ARCHITECTURE and what are its advantages?

Microservices are a hot topic in system design interviews. It is important to know why we use them instead of monolithic systems. The short answer is Scalability. The detailed one would be:
Advantages:
1) The microservice architecture is easier to reason about/design for a complicated system.
2) They allow new members to train for shorter periods and have less context before touching a system.
3) Deployments are fluid and continuous for each service.
4) They allow decoupling service logic on the basis of business responsibility
5) They are more available as a single service having a bug does not bring down the entire system. This is called a single point of failure.
6) Individual services can be written in different languages.
7) The developer teams can talk to each other through API sheets instead of working on the same repository, which requires conflict resolution.
8) New services can be tested easily and individually. The testing structure is close to unit testing compared to a monolith.
Microservices are at a disadvantage to Monoliths in some cases. Monoliths are favorable when:
1) The technical/developer team is very small
2) The service is simple to think of as a whole.
3) The service requires very high efficiency, where network calls are avoided as much as possible.
4) All developers must have a context of all services.
Recommended system design video course:
interviewready.io
00:00 How do they differ?
02:02 Advantages of Monoliths
03:33 Disadvantages of Monoliths
04:55 Advantages of Microservices
06:16 Disadvantages of Microservices
07:03 Summary
07:57 Thank you!
Along with video lectures, this course has architecture diagrams, capacity planning, API contracts, and evaluation tests. It's a complete package.
References:
buttercms.com/books/microserv...
articles.microservices.com/mo...
highscalability.com/blog/2018/...
• What I Wish I Had Know...
System Design Video Course:
interviewready.io
The above is a complete course on how systems are designed. Along with video lectures, the course has continuous updates and live classes.
System Design Playlist: • System Design for Begi...

[@md.mottakinchowdhury7898]

I have watched all of your system design videos (till now) on a single seating. Not that I am particularly preparing for interviews, I just find them interesting. You should continue making these contents. These are rich and practical. Keep it up.

[@gkcs]

Thanks!

[@vishnuvardhannayakam2991]

better to take time , dont take single seating lectures. if you take 2 or 3 per day you have chance of thinking on topic and you can relate to real time applications

[@pramodroy8137]

This is probably one of my few youtube comments, but this is exactly what I did. Very informative and concise playlist.

[@freezefrancis]

I second that

[@akashsaha7994]

Yes, I agree. I already know everything that is covered in this playlist from my regular work. But, still the topic is interesting and the content is engaging.

[@joshuapasaba1961]

2023 and this video is still helping out! I'm just new in the software engineering world and yet you've managed to discuss monolithic and microservice systems in a way that even a newbie can understand. I also appreciate the references you've left in the description for further reading. Thank you for this.

[@kshitizsingh9623]

Good video but missed some key points in favour of micro services example A. You can design a system with different technologies. B. You do not have to scale the entire system when load is high on just one function. C. Micro services support DevOps which enable CICD..... Also a microservices design are created using Domain driven design which also maps to the actual business function. To maintain separation of accountability I can have 2 microservices even in the case you mention.

[@gkcs]

Good points!

[@arthuraguiar5382]

If you don't mind me (politely) asking: Why wouldn't a monolith be compatible with CI/CD, on your point of view? Genuinely curious here, so I'd like to know your point of view on it.

[@adarshxd6274]

B is mentioned

[@dephc0n1]

As a SWE1, this is the perfect channel on KZbin. Thank you!

[@gkcs]

Thanks 😁

[@victordenisov1412]

Thanks Gaurav. Excellent videos. Though I would like to argue with a statement you are making about microservices vs. monolith. Not just you. Everyone makes this statement about microservices. Microservice architecture is easier for onboarding new members because they need less context - is just a false statement. Within monolith we can equally identify classes or packages that new developers need to work on without knowing about the rest of the system. Classes within monolith can be tested using unit tests. Microservices need to be tested with integration tests - they are harder to write. If system is monolithic it doesn't mean that we shouldn't reduce coupling between classes and increase cohesion with in classes. Linux is a monolithic architecture, but Linus speaks a lot about how important it was for them to come up with independent parts inside the kernel. So that these independent parts can be modified without knowing about the rest of the kernel. So ease of onboarding of new members is not really a feature of microservice architecture.

[@gkcs]

Agree. I read an article a couple of days back on this. Was planning to share it on Twitter tomorrow. What a coincidence 😁

[@dohyun0047]

thank you for your concern!

[@NoWarForever]

@@gkcs which is the twitter post?

[@NoWarForever]

@@gkcs which twitter post?

[@Tellalca]

Monoliths are also need to be tested with integration+system testing. That is not specific to microservices. "Within monolith we can equally identify classes or packages that new developers need to work on without knowing about the rest of the system". This comes out of the box with microservices, so no one has to identify those classes which makes it easier to onboard new developers. Also a in order to develop a monolithic application, a new developer needs to install and configure all the required applications like IDE's, plug-ins, DBMS', message queues, web servers etc. Assume a microservice that does not use MS SQL Server, then the developer won't be needed to install/configure that which again makes it easy for the new developer. Another thing is when developing monolithic applications, there is always a greater procedure for developing, testing, code reviewing and deployment. With microservices, only a subset of those procedures are needed. Again this is better for the developer.

[@mukundsridhar4250]

This is a very nice channel. Nice work Gaurav. :). My 2 cents :) Monolith Advantage / Microservices disadvantage. 1. Transaction management. 2. One does not have to deal with multiple technology stacks. 3.There is no need to maintain code at the same level for all the services. You don't need to pass on a jar to other services in order to enable resue of code. 4. Latency (as mentioned in the video) Microservices advantages 1. No single point of failure. 2. You can use the correct technology stack for the required microservice. 3. Decentralized architecture. 4. Decentralized data management. 5. No need to redeploy the whole application. Deployment is faster and easier. 6.Your microservices should be designed across products. SOA is designed around features. This way of thinking is more customer centric.

[@naufalm3482]

man.. I'm in the e-commerce business, and so grateful to watch and learn from this content.. thanks a lot for sharing, hope you can share more about IT world! Big Up!

[@pavanch3228]

Very good explanation in short video .Just adding few more points of my understanding Monolith is a single application build for many systems. In Monolith if any modifications done in the code the whole application should be build and deploy. In case of my microservices only the modified microservices will be deployed. Monolith uses local calls for interaction where as microservices will use network calls. So here Monolith will give better performance as compared to microservices. Testing will be easier in microservices because we test only modified microservice . In case of Monolith if any changes done need to perform the functionality testing of whole application to make sure application is working as expected.

[@gkcs]

Thanks Pavan!

[@kannantrichur]

correct 👍

[@zainmotiwala1342]

Now that's what I call method teaching. This is brilliant. Thanks for helping all of us.

[@BruceMount]

Your videos are amazingly clear and concise. Thank you so much!

[@quranconversations9836]

I teach CS and I like your way of explaining things, you are clever and that positive attitude and smil!. Your chuckle in 7:50 :D is so cute. Keep it up

[@charley7085]

These videos along with the comment section is giving me greater insights about system design. Keep up bro. 🔥

[@cseshivaprasad1985]

Hey Gaurav, I am going thru your videos around System Design, they are really crisp and clear. Thanks for your efforts. Regarding micro-services, I would like to add a few pointers. 1. Even with Larger Systems, sometimes micro-services may not be always a good fit. For example, in stream processing systems where processing is centered around per record based processing and micro service calls would worsen the performance. 2. Deployment of micro-services is far more complicated than monoliths. Because usually with Monoliths, it's a single unit of deployment(Eg: war file if WebApps) but with microservices depending on the scale and grain of the micro-services, there will be N number of deployments needed. It becomes difficult to keep track of the status of each service and in turn, knowing the readiness of the overall system will be a challenge. 3. Microservices are a great fit for mobile and web applications but when it comes to Big-Data world, it would complicate the overall process. For example, In the Web applications, we mostly deal with Web Server, Database and its easier to containerize them but when it comes to distributed systems containerizing them will be a challenge. I am not against of micro-services but wanted to list down few scenarios where micro-services may not be a great fit.

[@gkcs]

Good points Shivaprasad! I think some of these were addressed in the video too :)

[@cseshivaprasad1985]

Kubernetes helps with orchestration of containerization while ISIO is a service mesh. I don't think they will help with deployments.

[@IuriJacob]

Great complement. Very well explained. I think we have to be very careful when choosing the architecture. Different kind of problems may demand different ways to solve them.

[@praveen_somireddy]

Load balancing is very difficult in Monolith. Example, take Flight reservation system application as example. Every body uses search page to search flights. But only few goes to the booking of a searched flight. So search operation is taking too much load on that. So In Micro services, We can create as many instances as we can of Search micro service alone. I agree deployment and monitoring is very difficult in Micro services , but using Eureka or Spring admin console, we can have all the instances and monitor them easily. For small scale application development which scaling is not required, then Monolith is best.

[@user-eq4oy6bk5p]

+1 for second bullet point. Deployment of micro-service can be faster since it's a smaller unit of deployment, but coordination of multiple micro-services deployment can be pain in the ass.

[@Karthik-kt24]

I want to be able to communicate and speak like you do...You smile so much and have so much charisma...I refrain from smiling most of the time cause I look weird...Idk why! Thanks for inspiring me to improve 🙏🙏

[@josephfernando4867]

Really well done, concise is the word to describe this video. Since the topic is so well handled viewers can genuinely use this information to make decisions and analyze the need for a mono or micro for a system. So stackoverflow is a monolith that handles a massive load of questions on microservices.

[@cpsarathe]

I really like your explanation. For more clarity and better perspective I still have concern around MS architecture vs Monolith - 1 How is cost benefit ? Ms needs at least 2 developer (what if one quits ) working on each service ? You need as many host servers as you have services 2 You need to tack the flow of calls across call stack services . How about transaction ? 3 Code duplication is sure shot, data redundancy too . 4 you need backup plans , alerts monitoring for all these instances 5 For long run more maintenance cost At the end the benefit I found is instead of all services going down in Monolith only few will go down in Microservices Less customer impact.

[@mohammednagdy6661]

Dude you're the best! I watched several system design tutorials. But yours is amazing♥️👌🏼

[@anubhavbhargava5772]

Really a clear-cut explanation of some of the advanced topics!! Keep it up!

[@gkcs]

Thanks Anubav!

[@paritoshpandey7998]

Successfully performed 32 post request to the db in my head in one go, you are awsome broo

[@GhanshyamDobariya90]

You are gem on this programming world bro.... keep this up... Although I am a frontend guy, I get interest in backend bcz u teach very easy way...

[@gkcs]

Thank you!

[@etienneekpo348]

Managing several micro-services databases could be on a long run challenging. Great explanations! Hope MIT calls you as a special guest to lecture. :)

[@gkcs]

Some day perhaps 😁

[@stoneshou]

Lots of good information. In practice I also see efforts around starting off with micro services and move some into bigger services when it makes sense

[@ajaynegi1638]

Nice, well explained and engaging videos. The energy and positivity you show is great to watch. Great work. Keep it up!!

[@mayankdargan5195]

Thank you for such contents to give good exposure of how things actually work. I have watching the whole playlist as I have an interview tomorrow. Hoping this works out for me. Thank you!

[@kunalsaini1805]

Thanks Gaurav. Yes, Monolith is complex to understand completely in one go and basically tightly coupled. But the point that is a strong advantage there is apart form the fact that procedural calls are faster, in micro service architecture sometimes a service is dependent on too much on other services and when it comes to logging you also need to track the flow of all your calls plus they add an extra network cost, you need to handle all the failures, have retry logic and fall back in place.

[@samofohachinweuba1641]

Thanks @Kunal

[@HusGNR]

Really informative. Your explanation was clear, simple, and well-organised. Thanks.

[@Omniman2]

Great content as always. I think handling transactions also is a challenge in microservices, requiring eventual consistency, which I feel is hard.

[@thesoftwareengineer17]

Thanks Gaurav. Your videos are always helpful and easy to understand.Cheers!

[@thejet4244]

Your channel is the best place to learn backend engineering 🙏

[@ParadiseisYoursNow]

Per usual, Excellent, concise, accessible as heck!

[@cristianouzumaki2455]

Gaurav , your enthusiasm and such detailed explanation with all cons and pros makes your videos amazing. I often go through them in my free time because not only it makes me think a lot but its fun too.

[@gkcs]

Thanks Vibhor!

[@sharifulhaque6809]

A very clear and easy explanation of Microservices. Thanks a lot Gaurav

[@Nithin_Coorg]

All my life i worked on client side! these are gem concepts videos! thanks!

[@rajivpanta7145]

Very good video .watched many others same topic but you have presented really well and simple.. keep up good work..thx

[@KunalSharma-ew7jd]

Thanks for making system design videos. You're doing a wonderful job.

[@gkcs]

Thanks Kunal!

[@LifeLessonswithBhagavadGita]

You are a very smart and intelligent kid Gaurav.. Keep shining..!!

[@neerajkumar81]

Very well done, Gaurav. Keep up the good work!!

[@muhammadahmed6662]

Thanks Gaurav for these excellent videos, really helped me a lot understanding some concepts. It would be really great if you could make a video where you code this stuff because theoretically everything makes sense but actually making a good system design out of a business requirement becomes a bit hard. So, it would be great to see how you design an actual system in terms of classes, DB etc. and how you decouple stuff. I know there are ton of videos out there but your style is really understandable for me. Thanks again.

[@mihailfomin5194]

+1

[@KDOERAK]

A great intro talk about microservices: concise and clear. Thx.

[@gkcs]

Thank you!

[@igallebedev468]

you have awsome charisma man! thanks a lot for the great explamation!!!

[@tkbhateja2071]

Hi Gaurav, Thank you so much for this Excellent knowledge. I would like to request you, Please make the videos on the Microservices design patterns. Thank you

[@cloudverse260]

You are doing great work. They can be useful for placements

[@dhamodharansubramaniam3562]

Excellent videos. Thanks Gaurav.

[@christopher5731]

Excellent explanation and examples. Good work!

[@amanlonare4319]

Thanks for the great video Gaurav. Recently I have been hearing about “Modular Monoliths” or “Miniservices” a lot. Maybe a video on this topic from you could help us understand it better :)

[@vaishalijain3266]

wow, very crisp and clear . Thanks !

[@grijeshmnit]

You keep making vedio I will keep learning.... 💯 thanks

[@shelbycollins6116]

great videos and effort. subscribed to channel and been watching your videos to learn more about system designs in general. thanks for the content!

[@italosantana9192]

In my opinion, "MonolithFirst", by Martin Fowler is the best approach to start a new project for current scenarios. Because the high competitiveness (short deadlines) and low project budgets (small teams and limited resources).

[@gkcs]

Makes sense 🙂

[@idanshviro7673]

Thank you, very clear and interesting information!

[@ajithegde8063]

Your way of explaining things is so natural and easy to follow although I don't do lot of coding. I guess you have a great future as fantastic teacher Gaurav, something really needed for our Indian education system where focus is mainly on clearing exam without knowing the concept + application of the technology. Keep coding and keep teaching :-)

[@gkcs]

Thank you!

[@shrihara]

Just want to add one more advantage of micro service. As time progress, our software product also gets new features/modules etc. Our software customers also expand their business and buy new modules/features. Example in Banking, we now have online support, online banking, mobile banking etc. There may be some customers who do not want new modules. Example a bank do not have plans to roll out mobile banking application yet. So they do not want new modules. When we try to sell our software product, customer will not be interested in buying all the modules as they may not be working on all of them. Example - In banking, small banks may not be providing credit cards. So they do not want credit card module. Some customers want to just replace a particular module in their ecosystem as they find out that our product works better. in that case they want to deploy only that particular module. Example - Loans module in our banking software product works best in the competition and customers want to buy only that. They do not want to replace their online banking product. So microservice architecture makes sense as it gives lot of flexibility and also cost wise. It can also be easily used to plug it with other systems that customer might already be working with. We can provide new features as and when they require it.

[@mrinalinimusic]

Wonderful Videos ! So inspiring. I need some pointers on generating dynamic PDF documents from the front end with database in AWS. Will greatly appreciate if you already have a video for something like that.

[@samratchapagain4804]

thank u so much for clearing my doubt. Really this video helps me a lot.

[@dnavas7719]

"There's nothing micro about microservices" lol Great video :)

[@rahulg2051]

You are awesome and very nice tutuor. One suggestion ,may be you can share more reference link , channel ,book etc with session for further study .

[@ashalodhi9312]

Thanks Gaurav, this is perfect!!! Keep making such content! 🤟

[@anjalishaw8556]

Made it this far starting from your first system design video in a single seating, I had never been this interested in studying before( hyperbole) and maybe I'll watch a few more : P. Thanks a lot!

[@gkcs]

Thanks Anjali!

[@ypaut]

Very informative and just what I needed, thank you

[@renates-mante6385]

"Where is nothing micro about microservices" - loved it :))

[@anastasianaumko923]

This is great, thank you for your work 😌

[@codetolive27]

Hi Gaurav, Thanks for your efforts it was a good video. Following are few pointers which i would like to add 1) Monolith application can co-exist with microservices. What i mean here is that suppose if you have a large application which uses a MVC framework then the same application can also use a common services provided by a microservice. 2) Microservice architecture also has its own set of challenges in terms of maintenance and deployment. The Netflix architecture video about Mastering chaos discusses some problems. 3) Now a days the industry does not want a team to only focus on one thing and would like to have a small development team managing multiple application. Too cut costs can be one of the reasons. 4) With the advent of MVVM frameworks on client side like angularJS which performs a lot of processing on the client side would be better complemented with microservice architecture. Once again Keep up the good work

[@gkcs]

Great points Venkatesh!

[@rahimeinollahi1]

The awesome video was ...., thanks for explaining easy...

[@AbhishekKumar-wy7bp]

one of the best Microservice videos.

[@siddharthmanumusic]

Great work, Gaurav! All your videos are easy to follow and filled with your excitement :)

[@siddharthmanumusic]

I proposed a design yesterday at my work, quickly drew the system design and everyone loved the idea. Must be influenced by your spirit! Sometimes grown professionals grow lazy and young people bring in a new charisma :)

[@bimalkumar712]

Nice explanation bro..can you please provide a video of transaction management in microservices..

[@Live-hh6li]

Monolith - Single/Multiple machine running the computation Microservice - It's a division of whole works into business units which are turned into specific microservice. Adv Monolith: - Less moving parts - Good for small teams - Less duplication for tests etc - Faster because everything is in same box(procedure calls) Disadv Monlith: - Require more context - Deployment is complex (everything is touching every other thing) - Too much responsibility on one server (one can break everything) - Tight coupling Adv Micro: - Easy to scale - Less context required - Parallel development is easy - Less hidden parts(more resources can be provided where it is required) Disadv Micro: - Tougher to design Most of the times interviews are high scale and hence micro service is preferred Thanks for video 😄

[@n3bul0n]

nice 👍

[@arbenhaxha9118]

Your videos are great. I enjoy watching them and I think you're a good speaker.

[@gkcs]

Thank you!

[@lefteriseleftheriades7381]

I believe decoupling is not something only found in microservices. Infact even if it's a single process a good programmer has to deside on what the components of the system are and decouple them with interfaces. One could even do independent deployability in a monolith by having the system components built in dll files instead of having them built statically. A new developer doesn't have to understand the entire code, just the component they are working on and the interface contract on how it interracts with the other components.

[@shobhitagarwal5862]

main advantage of microservice is: scalability. you have freedom to scale x microservice while y remains at same capacity. While in monolith, whole system scales. But one disadvantage of microservice is handling transactions. If you are having architecture like your transaction is spread across various microservices. its not good. Please share your thought.

[@johnday3645]

Transaction .nice point.I was thinking does it fit in e-commerce? What do you say ?

[@himanshusainig]

This is so good, right to the point. Thanks for the videos. :)

[@gkcs]

Thanks!

[@e-guerrero]

Best vid on microservices hands down

[@ademtepe2855]

Very well explanation, thanks.

[@rohansawant8542]

Firstly, appreciate your efforts with this video. Besides the product roadmap, another key consideration is the cost of dev and maintenance. Any good matrices or stats you can research comparing these 2 archs?

[@thebuttnakedpodcast3006]

Thanks for this video. The best explanation I've across to date.

[@gkcs]

Thank you!

[@prashanthb6521]

Easily explained, thanks.

[@AbhishekSharma-kx6xj]

Hey Gaurav! In the end, you mentioned that Stack Overflow uses Monolith design. Can you explain how does it do that?

[@gkcs]

Read the highscalability blog, which mentions stackoverflow's architecture :)

[@ruchijain3443]

Can you please share the link

[@_romeopeter]

Great video as always!

[@gustavgmcsd]

very well explained! you own a new sub from this moment!

[@gkcs]

Thanks!

[@lander251]

Super clear explanation. Thank you :)

[@gkcs]

You're welcome!

[@AnikaNeela]

You've become one of my heroes in the programming world. Thank you so much!!

[@alsan8935]

Good job gaurav...Keep it up....5 Star

[@vijaysanthosh502]

Thanks broo saved my life for my exam...

[@RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS77]

Monoliths kind of get a bad rap so I appreciate the more balanced answers here. If you're a small team the overhead of spinning up services can be a bigger deal and it can make less sense.

[@andreiasimov33]

Awesome explanation!! :)

[@pseudofacts4356]

Hi Gaurav, I want to thank you so much for your videos n way of explanation. You. Have inspired me to learn further. Plz help me to know from where should I study nicroservice I am from dot net background

[@ashutosh6060]

Amazing work!! I like your accent and speed at which you say. Keep it up bro

[@gkcs]

Thanks!

[@amrendrasingh4812]

Excellent guru

[@kapilrules]

Thanks for making this video. Would it not be more challenging and difficult to test Microservice based system. Also need to have a plan on how it is released in production? Will all MS be updated to next version at same time or rolling upgrade? How it will impact if we have to have patch to fix production issue for particular MS

[@brianmendez4068]

Awesome explanation!

[@svet_lana8860]

Thanks for the very clear explanation!

[@gkcs]

:D

[@user-mw5bm2xh9x]

thanks for the presentation and explanation.

[@gkcs]

You are welcome!

[@justguitar2012]

Concise and succinct. Great job

[@gkcs]

Thank you!

[@TechnologySkills-gp1zh]

Awesome Gaurav.

[@harisridhar1668]

@4:55 Gaurav - do the majority of microservice architectures need a common gateway for clients and servers to connect to? Also, are microservices architectures easier for us to collect logs and metrics on specific system components, given their loose coupling too?

[@adarshtiwari6742]

Worst thing to ask after this video would be what is stack overflow? 🤣🤣🤣🤣nice video hatss off ♥️♥️♥️

[@jjsridharan]

Awesome video. Stack Overflow. Never heard of it. :D

[@gkcs]

Hahaha!

[@SandeepSharma-wx9pu]

Thanks so much for this significant tutorial. !!! Do you have any .Net Core Interview questions and answers | Architecture design videos/ articles/tutorial, if so could you please share the details?

[@robomextv]

you are doing a great job.