Service discovery, config, and resilience—build and run Java microservices with Spring Cloud.
Spring Cloud extends Spring Boot for distributed systems. Here’s how to use it for microservices.
Microservices and Spring Cloud
Building blocks
Service discovery — Eureka or Consul so services find each other by name. Register on startup; resolve at runtime. Reduces hard-coded URLs.
Config server — Centralized configuration (Git or vault). Clients pull config on startup or refresh. Use profiles (dev, prod) and encryption for secrets.
API gateway — Spring Cloud Gateway: route, rate-limit, and authenticate at the edge. Single entry point for clients.
Resilience — Resilience4j (or Spring Cloud Circuit Breaker): circuit breaker, retry, bulkhead. Prevent cascading failures when a dependency is down.
Distributed tracing — Micrometer + Zipkin/Sleuth: trace requests across services. Essential for debugging in production.
Microservices with Spring (survey):
Spring Cloud components used
Getting started
Add Spring Cloud dependencies (BOM for versions). Run Eureka and Config Server; register your Boot apps. Use Feign or RestTemplate with discovery client for service-to-service calls. Add Gateway when you need a single entry point.
Spring Cloud overview:
Takeaway
Spring Cloud fits when you have multiple Spring Boot services and need discovery, config, and resilience. Start small; add gateway and tracing as the system grows. Consider Kubernetes and service mesh for very large deployments.
