Which characteristic is essential for microservices architecture?

In microservices architecture, it is essential that services exist as independent deployment artifacts. This characteristic allows each microservice to be developed, deployed, and scaled independently of the others, enabling a more agile and flexible approach to building applications. By functioning as independent deployment units, microservices can be individually updated, maintained, and replaced without affecting other services in the system, which enhances the resilience and scalability of the overall architecture.

This independence facilitates continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) practices, as teams can deploy their services separately according to their individual release cycles. This is a core principle of microservices that contributes to reducing the complexity involved in managing larger systems by allowing developers to focus on specific functionalities without being hindered by the dependencies associated with monolithic architectures.

In summary, the ability for services to operate as independent deployment artifacts is a fundamental aspect of microservices architecture that supports modularity, enhances maintainability, and promotes rapid development and innovation.