Microservices and Scaling Strategy.

 

I have heard many times below question 

" How do I scale Microservices? 

 or

What type of Scaling Microservices unlocks?" 

So I thought to write a crisp article on the Scaling.

A distributed system can always be scaled in a 3D space, i.e X axis, Y axis, and Z axis, and we need to scale distributed system to manage the load and having a high availability of the website and of course managing the cost in an efficient manner by maintaining servers/other resources optimum way.

X-Axis offers to spawn the environment based on the load, the old way of scaling distributed system that is behind a load balancer increase instances. It offers infinite scaling.

Y-axis offers, scaling by isolated the business functionality, aka functional decomposition so if a function has more load/usage/priority than the other functionality, we only scale that function and managing the cost of resources optimized manner. it offers infinite scaling of a particular function but total decomposition is finite but can be increased as function increases.

Z-axis offers Scaling through partitioning via business parameters, it's unlocked servicing premium customers or special request or geodiversity, etc. It also can be infinite based on the business parameters. But total parameter rules is finite but can be increased as you add more rule to it.

Keep one thing in mid Monoliths also distributed and it is also logically functionally decomposed through multi-module projects or package structure etc, but while deploying it packages as a single artifact ear or jar, so it does not unlock the Y-axis, as it does not offer a physical functional decomposition, each function does not have it's own program space or environment(Per function per container/server), Microservice is by nature unlocks that so, Microservice adopted 3D space scaling.

 

Microservices uses 3 types of scaling, actually, It follows the Art of scaling principles.

Y-Axis Scaling:: Microservices' main focus is to do the functional decomposition and it does it very well, each function wrapped by a few microservices, so If one feature in your system dealing with high loads you can only scale up that functions only not touch the others.

Z-axis Scaling: It helps you to partition your data, zone wise if your business distributed geologically you can put data centers based on Zones and that datacenter will serve the request for that zone, it helps serve your request quickly, and if loads of zones increases you can scale only that zones, not only that you can apply logic based on request param and send it to separate servers, say you have premium customers you want to serve them quickly you can do that.

X-axis Sclalling: : you can spawn multiple instances of Microservices based on the loads, you can use Cloud or can spawn by containers, it will give you the whole environment, not only artifacts that save your boot uptime.

So, if you think Microservices Scaling in a Hirechy order it starts with Y-axis Scaling then each Microservices can be scaled Via X and Z axis, you can adopt all type of scaling through Microservices architecture.