Microservices architecture (MSA) enables faster innovation by allowing developers to be more agile. But its disaggregated architecture leads to an exploding endpoint problem, making communication among these endpoints a challenge.
In addition to developer challenges, DevOps will have a separate set of challenges. They have to tune their deployment engine to roll out frequent releases without disrupting the end users. Additionally, increasing the number of endpoints would mean that tracing a runtime issue will be more challenging and it requires an extra effort on including observability on all distributed components. As a solution to these challenges, software architects introduced a promising, future proof software architecture known as Service Mesh.
It’s a common misconception that implementing a service mesh means there is no requirement for API management. But the key difference is that a service mesh manages services and an API management platform manages APIs. By combining the capabilities of both, you create a complete end-to-end solution for your entire business functionality — from microservices to APIs to the end consumer. This provides a comprehensive solution to create, operate and manage microservices alongside their business requirement.
