Service discovery concept in Microservices - Cheat Sheet & Quick Revision

Recall & Review

beginner

What is service discovery in microservices?

Service discovery is a method that helps microservices find and communicate with each other automatically without hardcoding network locations.

beginner

Why is service discovery important in microservices architecture?

Because microservices can change locations or scale dynamically, service discovery ensures they can always find each other to work properly.

intermediate

Name two types of service discovery methods.

Client-side discovery, where the client finds services using a registry; and server-side discovery, where a load balancer or proxy finds services for the client.

beginner

What role does a service registry play in service discovery?

A service registry keeps a list of all available service instances and their locations, helping services find each other dynamically.

beginner

Give an example of a popular service discovery tool.

Examples include Consul, Eureka, and etcd, which help manage service registration and discovery in microservices.

What does service discovery help microservices do?

A Handle user authentication

B Store user data securely

C Find and communicate with other services automatically

D Manage database transactions

Service discovery helps microservices locate and communicate with each other without manual configuration.

Which component holds the list of available service instances?

A Service registry

B API gateway

C Database

D Load balancer

The service registry keeps track of all active service instances and their network locations.

In client-side discovery, who is responsible for locating services?

A The database

B The client itself

C The server

D The network router

In client-side discovery, the client queries the service registry to find service instances.

Which of these is NOT a service discovery tool?

A Consul

B etcd

C Eureka

D Redis

Redis is a data store, not a service discovery tool.

Why can hardcoding service locations be a problem in microservices?

A Services may move or scale dynamically

B It improves security

C It reduces network traffic

D It simplifies client code

Hardcoding is problematic because services can change IPs or ports when scaling or restarting.

Explain how service discovery works in a microservices system and why it is needed.

Think about how services find each other when their addresses change.

Describe the difference between client-side and server-side service discovery.

Consider who is responsible for finding the service in each method.