MicroServices IPC

An important concept while working with MicroServices is IPC, i.e how to set up communication between multiple microservices.

Handling Partial Failure

A good approach to follow is the one described by Netflix. The strategies for dealing with partial failures include:

• Network timeouts — Never block indefinitely and always use timeouts when waiting for a response. Using timeouts ensures that resources are never tied up indefinitely.
• Limiting the number of outstanding requests — Impose an upper bound on the number of outstanding requests that a client can have with a particular service. If the limit has been reached, it is probably pointless to make additional requests, and those attempts need to fail immediately.
• Circuit breaker pattern — Track the number of successful and failed requests. If the error rate exceeds a configured threshold, trip the circuit breaker so that further attempts fail immediately. If a large number of requests are failing, that suggests the service is unavailable and that sending requests is pointless. After a timeout period, the client should try again and, if successful, close the circuit breaker.
• Provide fallbacks — Perform fallback logic when a request fails. For example, return cached data or a default value, such as an empty set of recommendations.

Netflix Hystrix is an open-source library that implements these and other patterns. If you are using the JVM you should definitely consider using Hystrix. And, if you are running in a non-JVM environment, you should use an equivalent library.

This is a nice resource for learning about these concepts

This course teaches how to build microservices in Spring Boot that are resilient and fault-tolerant.

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