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Microservices.
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Beginner 7
01

What are microservices and how do they differ from monolithic architecture?

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Microservices are an architectural approach where applications are built as a collection of small, independent services that communicate over well-defined APIs. Each service is responsible for a specific business capability and can be developed, deployed, and scaled independently.

Key differences from monolithic architecture:

  • Deployment: Microservices can be deployed independently vs. monoliths deployed as single unit
  • Technology stack: Each microservice can use different technologies vs. monoliths using single stack
  • Scaling: Individual services can be scaled vs. scaling entire application
  • Team structure: Small teams can own services vs. large teams working on single codebase
  • Failure isolation: Failure in one service doesn't bring down entire system

Example: An e-commerce platform might have separate services for user management, product catalog, payment processing, and order management, each deployable independently.

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02

What are the main benefits of microservices architecture?

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Primary benefits:

  • Independent deployment: Services can be updated without affecting others
  • Technology diversity: Teams can choose appropriate technology for each service
  • Scalability: Scale individual services based on demand
  • Fault isolation: Failures are contained within services
  • Team autonomy: Small teams can work independently
  • Faster development: Parallel development of services
  • Better maintainability: Smaller codebases are easier to understand and modify
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03

What are the main challenges of microservices architecture?

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Key challenges:

  • Distributed system complexity: Network latency, partial failures, data consistency
  • Operational overhead: More services to deploy, monitor, and maintain
  • Data consistency: Managing transactions across services
  • Service discovery: Finding and connecting to services
  • Testing complexity: Integration testing becomes more complex
  • Debugging: Tracing requests across multiple services
  • Network communication: Inter-service communication overhead
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04

What is the Single Responsibility Principle in the context of microservices?

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Each microservice should have a single responsibility and should encapsulate one business capability. This means:

  • One business function: Service handles one specific business area
  • One reason to change: Service changes only when that business area changes
  • Clear boundaries: Well-defined inputs, outputs, and responsibilities

Example: A user service should only handle user-related operations (authentication, profile management) and not mix in order processing or payment logic.

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05

What is containerization and how does it benefit microservices?

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Containerization packages applications with their dependencies into lightweight, portable containers.

Benefits for microservices:

  • Consistency: Same environment across dev, test, prod
  • Isolation: Services don't interfere with each other
  • Portability: Run anywhere containers are supported
  • Resource efficiency: Lighter than virtual machines
  • Scalability: Quick startup times for scaling

Example Docker container:

FROM node:14
WORKDIR /app
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm install
COPY . .
EXPOSE 3000
CMD ["node", "server.js"]
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06

What are the three pillars of observability?

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The three pillars of observability are:

  1. Metrics: Numerical measurements over time

    • Examples: Response time, error rate, throughput
    • Tools: Prometheus, CloudWatch, DataDog
  2. Logs: Discrete events with timestamps

    • Examples: Error messages, audit trails, debug info
    • Tools: ELK Stack, Splunk, Fluentd
  3. Traces: Request flow through distributed system

    • Examples: End-to-end request journey
    • Tools: Jaeger, Zipkin, AWS X-Ray

Why all three needed:

  • Metrics show what's happening
  • Logs explain why it's happening
  • Traces show where it's happening
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07

How do you implement health checks for microservices?

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Health checks are endpoints that report the operational status of a service.

Types of health checks:

  • Liveness: Is the service running?
  • Readiness: Can the service handle requests?
  • Startup: Has the service finished initializing?

Implementation example:

app.get('/health', (req, res) => {
  const healthCheck = {
    uptime: process.uptime(),
    status: 'OK',
    timestamp: Date.now(),
    checks: {
      database: checkDatabase(),
      externalAPI: checkExternalAPI()
    }
  };
  res.status(200).send(healthCheck);
});

Best practices:

  • Keep health checks lightweight
  • Check critical dependencies
  • Return appropriate HTTP status codes
  • Include relevant diagnostic information
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Intermediate 32
08

When should you choose microservices over monolithic architecture?

Part of Pro
09

Explain the concept of bounded contexts in microservices.

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10

Explain the Database-per-Service pattern.

Part of Pro
11

What is an API Gateway and why is it important in microservices?

Part of Pro
12

Explain the Strangler Fig pattern for migrating from monolith to microservices.

Part of Pro
13

What is service discovery and why is it needed?

Part of Pro
14

Compare synchronous vs asynchronous communication in microservices.

Part of Pro
15

What is the Circuit Breaker pattern and how does it work?

Part of Pro
16

How do you handle data consistency in microservices?

Part of Pro
17

What are the different strategies for sharing data between microservices?

Part of Pro
18

How do you handle distributed caching in microservices?

Part of Pro
19

Explain the concept of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) in microservices.

Part of Pro
20

What is Blue-Green deployment and how is it used with microservices?

Part of Pro
21

What is Canary deployment and when would you use it?

Part of Pro
22

What is distributed tracing and why is it important for microservices?

Part of Pro
23

How do you implement centralized logging in microservices?

Part of Pro
24

What metrics should you monitor in a microservices architecture?

Part of Pro
25

How do you implement authentication and authorization in microservices?

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26

What is mutual TLS (mTLS) and why is it important for microservices?

Part of Pro
27

How do you handle secrets management in microservices?

Part of Pro
28

What is the testing pyramid for microservices?

Part of Pro
29

What is contract testing and why is it important for microservices?

Part of Pro
30

How do you test microservices in isolation?

Part of Pro
31

What is the Backend for Frontend (BFF) pattern?

Part of Pro
32

Explain the Event-Driven Architecture pattern in microservices.

Part of Pro
33

What is the Timeout pattern and how do you implement it?

Part of Pro
34

What is the Retry pattern and what are its best practices?

Part of Pro
35

How do you handle versioning in microservices APIs?

Part of Pro
36

How do you handle cross-cutting concerns in microservices?

Part of Pro
37

How do you implement graceful shutdown in microservices?

Part of Pro
38

How do you handle configuration management in microservices?

Part of Pro
39

How do you implement rate limiting in a microservices architecture?

Part of Pro
Expert 13
40

Explain the Saga pattern for distributed transactions.

Part of Pro
41

What is Event Sourcing and how does it relate to microservices?

Part of Pro
42

What is CQRS and how does it fit with microservices?

Part of Pro
43

What is a service mesh and what problems does it solve?

Part of Pro
44

What is chaos engineering and how does it apply to microservices?

Part of Pro
45

What is the Bulkhead pattern and how does it improve resilience?

Part of Pro
46

How do you handle data migration in a microservices environment?

Part of Pro
47

What are the performance implications of microservices and how do you address them?

Part of Pro
48

What is the Database-per-Service pattern's impact on reporting and analytics?

Part of Pro
49

How do you handle service dependencies and prevent circular dependencies?

Part of Pro
50

What strategies do you use for microservices testing in production?

Part of Pro
51

How do you implement service mesh in microservices architecture?

Part of Pro
52

What are the key patterns for microservices data consistency?

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