Introduction to Microservices & Docker

What are Microservices?

Microservices are independently deployable services that encapsulate specific business functionalities. Each service runs in its own process and communicates using lightweight mechanisms such as HTTP APIs.

Benefits of Microservices Architecture

• Independent deployments: Teams can deploy services without affecting others.
• Scalability: Scale services independently based on demand.
• Flexibility: Services can be written in different languages or frameworks.
• Fault isolation: Failures are isolated to individual services.

Why Use Docker for Microservices?

• Lightweight: Docker containers start faster and use fewer resources than VMs.
• Portability: Containers run the same across dev, test, and prod environments.
• Isolation: Each service runs in its own container with its own dependencies.
• Infrastructure-as-code: Easily manage and version infrastructure with Dockerfiles and Compose.

Example: Monolithic vs. Microservices E-commerce App

Here’s a simplified comparison of a monolith vs. microservices-based architecture:

// Monolith: All-in-one codebase
├── ECommerceApp
│   ├── UsersModule
│   ├── OrdersModule
│   ├── ProductsModule

// Microservices:
├── user-service
├── order-service
├── product-service

Each service is developed, tested, deployed, and scaled independently.

Microservices combined with Docker unlock flexibility, resilience, and speed for modern software systems. In the next section, we’ll dive into setting up Docker to power microservices development.