10 Common and Not-So-Common Challenges of Microservices Architecture
Surprisingly, one of the common microservices challenges is not about the technical side. It’s about the fact that many organizations want to keep up with the times and implement microservices for the sake of them. But the truth is that not every organization needs a distributed system.
By Statista, 85% of large organizations having more than 5,000 employees use microservices. It makes perfect sense because the advantages of microservices shine brightly for big companies with complex operations. At the same time for smaller companies, microservices architecture problems and complexity can outweigh the benefits.
However, even giants with no relevant approach to coping with microservices challenges may not realize their value. That’s why in this article we’ll look at the microservices challenges both common and less-discussed and describe some ways on how to overcome them.
Quick Tips for Busy People
Unique challenges of microservices architecture require thoughtful planning and experience — if not, success is put at risk. Here’s a rundown of the main problems with microservices architecture:
- Communication delays: complex inter-service communications that produce bottlenecks.
- Data consistency support: difficulty in maintaining synchronized data across decentralized systems.
- Complex dependency control: managing complicated interconnections between multiple services.
- Transaction management: ensuring reliability and accuracy in distributed transactions.
- Versions support: handling updates and backward compatibility across service versions.
- Inter-service communication security: preventing vulnerabilities in data exchange between services.
- Efficient deployment: synchronization of processes for deployment without crashing the system.
- Comprehensive testing: ensuring that everything works well together in many different scenarios.
- Integration of supporting tools: selection, implementation, and standardization of the tools to be used.
- Knowledge synchronization: keeping everybody in the loop about the architecture goals.
Long story short, the main solution to all these microservices challenges is seasoned leadership and a team of experts with proven experience in microservices architecture development services. If this answer doesn’t satisfy you, below we’ll provide more detailed challenge-solution descriptions.
Communication Delays
Why it’s a problem
In a microservices architecture, different elements of the application communicate with each other using network protocols. This type of communication may introduce one of the common issues with microservices architecture: response delays.
The larger the service and the more of its elements are occupied, the longer it takes for the service to respond. If multiple services interact, a delay in one service can cascade, leading to noticeable performance degradation across the whole workflow.
How to solve it
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Optimize service calls
Use lightweight and faster communication protocols, such as gRPC or Message Queues, to speed up interactions between services.
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Minimize unnecessary synchronization
To avoid delays and improve performance, do not synchronize data in non-essential areas.
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Introduce caching mechanisms
Avoid repeated queries to the database using caching tools like Redis to store frequently accessed data for fast retrieval. This reduces the load on the database and decreases response times.
Data Consistency Support
Why it’s a problem
When using the microservices architecture, each service typically has its own data store. While this independence supports scalability, it also introduces microservices challenges in maintaining data consistency.
For example, if there’s a change being processed by one service, other services dependent on the same data may not get the update instantly and hence create synchronization problems. This delay might result in inconsistencies between services and also affect the accuracy of the data, ultimately resulting in operational errors.
How to solve it
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Adopt event-driven architecture
By using an event-driven approach, update propagation across services is possible asynchronously. This way, the system achieves eventual consistency, ensuring data is synchronized over time without requiring real-time updates.
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Alternatively, adopt domain-driven architecture
By separating your data and business processes between independent services that never use the same data or data storage, you will exclude the question of data consistency from possible problems.
Complex Dependency Control
Why it’s a problem
In a microservices architecture, some services can use the same elements, for example, the same inner library. The best practice for microservices architecture here is to implement this library in each service independently. So, if a particular service requires some specific changes in the library, modifications won’t affect other services.
But in reality, dev teams often use another approach and introduce dependency from the same library for all services simultaneously, potentially causing microservices architecture problems. In this case, modifications in the library intended only for one service may affect other services, resulting in incorrect or even lost functionality.
How to solve it
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Try not to introduce common inner libraries
Even if at first sight it seems like a good idea to put all common logic in the same place and re-use it, in reality, you are putting the time bomb into your services. And the more services you have, the louder they will explode when you need custom changes. If the project already has such a flaw, you need to inline this dependency.
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Document all dependencies
There should be clear documentation for all service dependencies to enhance transparency and a better level of understanding between teams.
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Use tools for dependency mapping
It allows your team to visualize the dependencies, making it easier to find design issues and resolve them before they cause major problems.
Transaction Management
Why it’s a problem
As we mentioned earlier, to keep data consistency within microservices, you can synchronize data asynchronously. But there are some cases, for example, with payments, in which data must be synchronized within the same request.
Here, transaction management plays a crucial role, supporting atomicity and data consistency. And the distributed nature of microservices doesn’t simplify the process.
How to solve it
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Implement the Saga pattern
Split long-running transactions into smaller, independent steps with a proper rollback mechanism for errors. This ensures that if part of the transaction fails, it's possible to revert changes, keeping the system in a valid state.
Versions Support
Why it’s a problem
This microservices challenge is often underestimated. When a microservice evolves to provide data in a new way, dependent services might remain unaware of these changes, risking system failure.
Addressing this requires either updating all connected services simultaneously or ensuring backward compatibility. Both approaches are far from trivial.
Backward compatibility may not always be feasible due to extensive changes, while atomic updates demand comprehensive knowledge of all dependencies and significant effort. As the number of dependent services grows, even minor updates become increasingly cumbersome, making versioning a critical yet challenging aspect of microservices architecture.
How to solve it
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Prepare and maintain e2e tests
This task is mostly seen as redundant, since e2e testing requires both technical expertise and consumes CI/CD resources and time. However, having such test coverage of the system will allow you to identify and fix inter-service issues in the fastest possible manner.
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Leverage canary releases
Deploying updates to a small user group first helps you detect issues early, ensuring dependent microservices remain stable before wider implementation.
Inter-Service Communication Security
Why it’s a problem
Dependence on network communication brings another challenge of microservices architecture. You need to ensure data transmitted between services is properly secured to avoid data breaches in case of an attack. By compromising sensitive information, you will endanger the integrity of the whole system.
How to solve it
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Encrypt communication with TLS
Secure all inter-service communication by implementing TLS encryption to protect data transfer and prevent unauthorized access.
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Leverage token-based authentication
Implement standards like OAuth 2.0 or JSON Web Tokens (JWT) to securely verify service identities. This ensures that only authorized entities can access or interact with services.
Efficient Deployment
Why it’s a problem
Unlike monoliths, where you simply launch a single app, microservices demand orchestrating multiple moving parts to keep the entire architecture running smoothly. This complexity often demands dedicated DevOps expertise to ensure reliable releases, scale systems as traffic spikes, and make sure everything stays stable.
When you need to scale, you can’t just add another instance with app duplication, as in the case with the monolith. The process is more intricate, but with the right team and tools, it’s the backbone of a successful microservices ecosystem.
How to solve it
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Leverage automated CI/CD pipelines
Automate the build, testing, and deployment so that the updates are reliable and consistent across services.
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Use container orchestration tools
Orchestrate using tools, such as Kubernetes, which allow for streamlined deployments, scaling, and management.
Comprehensive Testing
Why it’s a problem
Testing in a microservices architecture is more than just validating individual services. It ensures these interactions work cohesively within the whole system. While unit and functional tests can show that the isolated components work, finding problems arising from interdependencies between multiple services is where things get complicated.
For example, the service is working but we can’t reach it because of the network issues. Or the service works and the network operates, but when we rolled out new service versions, we forgot to update the library, so the request couldn’t be processed. Options are endless. This results in more complex issues detecting and resolving, demanding more resources.
How to solve it
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Integrate testing into CI/CD workflow
Add comprehensive integration and regression tests to your CI/CD pipelines so that services are well integrated during updates and deployments.
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Increase testing resources
Hire more testers to focus on finding and fixing integration issues across services, improving overall system reliability.
Integration of Supporting Tools
Why it’s a problem
Integrating supporting tools in a microservices architecture is a less-discussed but critical challenge. Essential features, such as logging, authentication, and health checks, often end up being implemented separately in each microservice, creating inefficiencies.
However, it would be more correct to centralize these utilities, making them accessible to all services as shared tools. This enables aggregated data monitoring, simplifying troubleshooting by providing a unified view of the system.
How to solve it
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Use unified logging and monitoring tools
These centralized tools are supposed to collect data from all services, hence making troubleshooting easier with a better view of the whole system.
Knowledge Synchronization
Why it’s a problem
When the system and number of microservices, as well as developers, grows, it becomes more difficult to keep all the specialists on the same page. While team responsibilities are limited by specific microservices, developers need to understand the whole system to avoid technical conflicts.
How to solve it
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Centralize and update documentation
Keep a single source of truth for system architecture and processes, updated by all teams to have uniform information.
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Conduct regular training and workshops
Organize periodic sessions to align teams, share knowledge, and reinforce best practices for working with the microservices architecture.
To Sum Up
Microservices can bring revolutionary flexibility, scalability, and efficiency to your business. But let’s be honest: it’s not altogether smooth sailing. Without proper strategies and expertise to guide you, problems with microservices architecture can be overwhelming indeed.
That’s where a team like Expert Soft with experience in microservices architecture development services makes all the difference. We’ve been solving the tough issues with microservices architecture and helping businesses turn complex systems into well-oiled machines. Let’s discuss how you can implement microservices to truly benefit from them, not end up with complexity and wasted resources.
Andreas Kozachenko is the Head of Technology Strategy and Solutions at Expert Soft, a global ecommerce software delivery company, providing strategic guidance for large-scale web projects. Andreas has 10+ years of experience with headless and MACH architectures across wholesale, retail, health care and fintech. Andreas's technical initiatives have helped Fortune 500 corporations secure and enhance their ecommerce presence.
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