What is Service Discovery and why do we need it?

The Problem:

In microservices, instances are dynamic (assigned different IPs/Ports on every deployment/restart). Hardcoding URLs is impossible.

The Solution:

Service Discovery (e.g., Netflix Eureka, Consul, Zookeeper).

• Service Registry: A central hub where all services register their location.
• Service Registration: On startup, a microservice sends its IP and Port to the registry.
• Service Discovery: When Service A needs to call Service B, it asks the registry for Service B's location.

Implementation:

Use @EnableEurekaServer for the registry and @EnableDiscoveryClient for the microservices.