4.1 Service Discovery

In a microservices architecture, services need to find and communicate with each other dynamically. Service discovery mechanisms ensure that services register themselves when they are deployed and can be found by other services.

• Tools: Consul, Eureka, Etcd.

4.2 API Gateway

An API Gateway serves as a single point of entry for client requests. It routes requests to the appropriate services, handles authentication, rate limiting, and even response aggregation (combining data from multiple services).

• Tools: Kong, Zuul, Traefik.

4.3 Load Balancing

Distributes incoming network traffic across multiple services to ensure no single service is overwhelmed.

• Tools: NGINX, HAProxy, Envoy.

4.4 Data Management

In a monolith, you often have a single database. In microservices, each service typically has its own database, making them truly independent. This introduces the concept of distributed data management.

• Common approaches include CQRS (Command Query Responsibility Segregation) and Event Sourcing for handling distributed data consistency.

4.5 Monitoring and Logging

Since microservices are distributed across multiple instances, it's critical to have proper monitoring, logging, and tracing in place.

• Tools: Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack, Jaeger for distributed tracing.