9 Essential Components of a Production Microservice Application

1. API Gateway

The gateway provides a unified entry point for client applications. It handles routing, filtering, and load balancing.

2. Service Registry

The service registry contains the details of all the services. The gateway discovers the service using the registry. For example, Consul, Eureka, Zookeeper, etc.

3. Service Layer

Each microservice serves a specific business function and can run on multiple instances. These services can be built using frameworks like Spring Boot, NestJS, etc.

4. Authorization Server

Used to secure the microservices and manage identity and access control. Tools like Keycloak, Azure AD, and Okta can help over here.

5. Data Storage

Databases like PostgreSQL and MySQL can store application data generated by the services.

6. Distributed Caching

Caching is a great approach for boosting the application performance. Options include caching solutions like Redis, Couchbase, Memcached, etc.

7. Async Microservices Communication

Use platforms such as Kafka and RabbitMQ to support async communication between microservices.

8. Metrics Visualization

Microservices can be configured to publish metrics to Prometheus and tools like Grafana can help visualize the metrics.

9. Log Aggregation and Visualization

Logs generated by the services are aggregated using Logstash, stored in Elasticsearch, and visualized with Kibana.