Search code examples
architecturemicroservicesapache-zookeepernetflix-eurekaorchestration

What is the role of Zookeeper vs Eureka for microservices?


I am going to implement the orchestration of a set of microservices in my application. Two widely using tools I found Apache Zookeeper and Netflix Eureka.

Can anyone please give a comparison based on fundamental differences, those two services have?

Is there any other powerful tool?


Solution

  • I am going to implement the orchestration of a set of microservices in my application.

    This is a hard problem to solve by yourself. You are probably better off using an existing orchestration system (see below).

    Is there any other powerful tool?

    You should look into kubernetes, which seems to be the standard in orchestration these days. It has many additional benefits (enable scalability, self-healing, etc) and is widely used in production today. See the following links:

    Regarding comparing zookeeper, eureka and kubernetes:

    • Zookeeper is a distributed key value store. It can be used as the basis to implement service discovery (similar to etcd).
    • Eureka is primarily a service locator used as part of Netflixes load balancers and failover(allow finding the right service targets for distributing client calls to members of an application cluster).
    • Kubernetes is a container orchestration solution that includes the deployment, discovery and self-healing of services. For a complete list of features, check the link above. The service discovery in kubernetes is based on dns in the virtual network it spans and builds upon etcd.
    • Consul (mentioned in the other answer) is a service discovery framework with a REST interface and some additional features (Health Checking, Service Segmentation,..). It has its own internal distributed key value store that can be used as well.