Microservices: Service Discovery

Implement service registration and dynamic discovery with health checks in microservices.

When to Use

• Services are deployed dynamically (Kubernetes, ECS, auto-scaling groups) and their IPs change
• You need services to find each other without hardcoded hostnames
• You want health-check-aware routing — only route to healthy instances
• You're scaling services horizontally and need load balancing across instances

Instructions

Kubernetes DNS-based discovery (most common — no code needed):

# Kubernetes handles discovery automatically via DNS
# Service A calls Service B using the DNS name: http://order-service:8080
# Kubernetes resolves this to the correct pod IPs

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: order-service
  namespace: production
spec:
  selector:
    app: order-service
  ports:
    - port: 8080
      targetPort: 8080
  type: ClusterIP # internal only

---
# In your app code — just use the DNS name
const ORDER_SERVICE_URL = process.env.ORDER_SERVICE_URL ?? 'http://order-service:8080';

Consul-based service registration (for non-Kubernetes environments):

import Consul from 'consul';

const consul = new Consul({ host: process.env.CONSUL_HOST ?? 'consul' });

async function registerService(): Promise<void> {
  const serviceId = `order-service-${process.env.POD_NAME ?? process.env.HOSTNAME}`;

  await consul.agent.service.register({
    id: serviceId,
    name: 'order-service',
    port: parseInt(process.env.PORT ?? '8080'),
    address: process.env.POD_IP ?? '0.0.0.0',
    tags: ['v1', 'production'],
    check: {
      http: `http://${process.env.POD_IP}:${process.env.PORT}/health`,
      interval: '10s',
      timeout: '5s',
      deregistercriticalserviceafter: '30s',
    },
  });

  console.log(`Registered service: ${serviceId}`);

  // Deregister gracefully on shutdown
  const cleanup = async () => {
    await consul.agent.service.deregister(serviceId);
    process.exit(0);
  };

  process.on('SIGTERM', cleanup);
  process.on('SIGINT', cleanup);
}

// Client-side discovery — resolve service address from Consul
async function resolveService(name: string): Promise<string> {
  const services = await consul.health.service({
    service: name,
    passing: true, // only healthy instances
  });

  if (services.length === 0) throw new Error(`No healthy instances of ${name}`);

  // Simple round-robin
  const instance = services[Math.floor(Math.random() * services.length)];
  return `http://${instance.Service.Address}:${instance.Service.Port}`;
}

// Usage
const orderServiceUrl = await resolveService('order-service');
const order = await fetch(`${orderServiceUrl}/orders/${orderId}`);

Service discovery with caching (avoid per-request lookup):

class ServiceRegistry {
  private cache = new Map<string, { url: string; expiresAt: number }>();
  private readonly ttlMs = 30_000; // cache for 30 seconds

  async resolve(serviceName: string): Promise<string> {
    const cached = this.cache.get(serviceName);
    if (cached && Date.now() < cached.expiresAt) return cached.url;

    const url = await this.lookup(serviceName);
    this.cache.set(serviceName, { url, expiresAt: Date.now() + this.ttlMs });
    return url;
  }

  private async lookup(name: string): Promise<string> {
    // Could be Consul, etcd, or DNS
    return resolveService(name);
  }

  invalidate(serviceName: string): void {
    this.cache.delete(serviceName);
  }
}

const registry = new ServiceRegistry();

// Use in HTTP client
async function callOrderService(path: string): Promise<Response> {
  const baseUrl = await registry.resolve('order-service');
  const response = await fetch(`${baseUrl}${path}`);

  if (response.status === 503) {
    // Service may have moved — invalidate cache and retry once
    registry.invalidate('order-service');
    const freshUrl = await registry.resolve('order-service');
    return fetch(`${freshUrl}${path}`);
  }

  return response;
}

Details

Client-side vs. server-side discovery:

	Client-Side	Server-Side
Who resolves	Each service	Load balancer / gateway
Example	Consul + client library	AWS ALB, Kubernetes Service
Complexity	Higher (each service implements)	Lower (transparent)
Flexibility	More control	Less control

In Kubernetes, prefer server-side discovery — Services and DNS handle it for you.

Health checks are required: Discovery without health checks routes traffic to dead instances. Register health check endpoints and ensure Consul/k8s removes unhealthy instances quickly (see

microservices-health-check

skill).

Anti-patterns:

• Hardcoding service IPs or hostnames — breaks on any deployment change
• Resolving service addresses on every request without caching — hammers the registry
• No graceful deregistration on shutdown — registry keeps routing to the dead instance until health check catches it

Environment variable pattern for configuration:

// Use environment variables for service URLs in all environments
// Development: http://localhost:8081
// Staging/Production: http://order-service (Kubernetes DNS)
const ORDER_SERVICE_URL = process.env.ORDER_SERVICE_URL;
if (!ORDER_SERVICE_URL) throw new Error('ORDER_SERVICE_URL is required');

Source

microservices.io/patterns/service-registry.html

Process

1. Read the instructions and examples in this document.
2. Apply the patterns to your implementation, adapting to your specific context.
3. Verify your implementation against the details and edge cases listed above.

Harness Integration

• Type: knowledge — this skill is a reference document, not a procedural workflow.
• No tools or state — consumed as context by other skills and agents.

Success Criteria

• The patterns described in this document are applied correctly in the implementation.
• Edge cases and anti-patterns listed in this document are avoided.