What is a Service Mesh? A Closer Look
In the world of software, you probably keep hearing a lot about ‘service meshes’. But what exactly is a service mesh? And how can it benefit application developers and the user experience? All of this (and more) is looked at in close detail right here.
What is a Service Mesh?
Over recent years, service mesh products have become very popular. In simple terms, a service mesh is an infrastructure layer that can be added to any application. Once a service mesh is part of an application, it then controls the service-to-service communications, such as how one part of an application communicates with another part of the application. It’s really smart and ultimately has a huge impact on the industry.
Back in the old days, when applications were developed, they usually had one specific purpose. In 2023, it’s a whole different ball game. Now, nearly all of the big companies, including Amazon and Uber, have switched to what are called ‘microservices’. These companies are now able to deliver complex apps (that have countless features) to their customers in a simple, easy-to-use format. This is where service meshes enter the party.
Service Mesh Example: Shopping Website
These days, everybody shops online, right? One of the most popular ways to do this is through eCommerce sites (e.g., eBay). These sorts of sites are made up of countless different parts (‘microservices’) that are designed to give shoppers exactly what they want. However, the key is that all of these different parts need to communicate with each other. If not, the entire thing comes crashing down.
When you open a shopping site and find a t-shirt you like, the site will tell you whether or not the t-shirt is in stock. This is only possible because the company’s inventory database is able to communicate with the product app page. Occasionally, though, the inventory database (or another part of the site) might get overwhelmed with requests due to too many people using the shopping app. In a case like this, the service mesh will route requests from each service to the next service, ensuring that the app can keep functioning without becoming overloaded and crashing.
Think of the service mesh as the cool and calm middleman that keeps the communications between a site’s microservices ticking over. If you don’t use a service mesh, you’re leaving your application open to a boatload of potential problems — which is something you obviously don’t want to happen!
Benefits of Using a Service Mesh
Now that you’re up-to-date with the basics of how a service mesh works, it’s time to run through some of the benefits you can expect from integrating service meshes into your business apps.
Better manage your application traffic.
Make life easier for developers who will no longer have to spend hours writing infrastructure code and can instead focus on the app itself.
Experience smoother cloud migration.
There are plenty of other benefits that come with using service meshes — but there isn’t enough time to discuss them all.
Moving into the future, it’s highly recommended that you start to use service meshes so that you can deliver better applications to your customers. In today’s competitive markets, this is invaluable.