ITGSS Certified DevOps Engineer Practice Test

Which term describes an interface that manages service communication between microservices?

1. Service mesh

2. Load balancer

3. API gateway

4. Network router

The correct answer is: Service mesh

A service mesh is an infrastructure layer that facilitates service-to-service communication in a microservices architecture. It offers capabilities such as discovery, routing, failure handling, and observability, allowing microservices to interact seamlessly and securely. Service meshes often integrate features like traffic management and security policies, providing a consistent way to manage the complexity that arises from multiple services communicating with each other. In contrast, while load balancers direct traffic among servers to optimize resource use, an API gateway acts as a single entry point for clients to access various microservices, focusing more on external communication than internal service interactions. A network router primarily deals with directing data packets within networks without the specialized features for managing service communications that a service mesh provides.