microservices

name	microservices
description	Microservices architecture patterns, communication, resilience, and observability.
globs	["**/docker-compose*","**/Dockerfile","**/k8s/**","**/proto/**"]
priority	75
tags	["architecture"]

Microservices Best Practices

Design

• Design around business domains (DDD)
• Each service owns its data
• Use API gateways for routing
• Keep services independently deployable
• Use event-driven architecture for decoupling

Communication

• Synchronous: REST, gRPC
• Asynchronous: Message queues (RabbitMQ, Kafka)
• Use circuit breakers (retry, timeout, fallback)
• Use saga pattern for distributed transactions
• Use idempotency keys for safe retries

Resilience

• Implement health checks
• Use circuit breakers (Hystrix/Resilience4j pattern)
• Implement retry with exponential backoff
• Use bulkhead pattern for isolation
• Design for failure — graceful degradation

Observability

• Structured logging with correlation IDs
• Distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry)
• Metrics collection (Prometheus)
• Centralized log aggregation (ELK/Loki)
• Alerting on SLOs, not just errors

Data

• Database per service
• Use event sourcing for audit trails
• Use CQRS for read/write optimization
• Use eventual consistency where possible