Boosting Scalability in Microservice Architectures with Consensus Mechanisms

Microservice architectures are preferred for their scalability and flexibility, however, managing distributed transactions in these systems poses significant challenges, especially in terms of consistency and fault tolerance.To address these issues, this study evaluates two distinct approaches: Paxos, a consensus algorithm that ensures agreement among distributed nodes, and the enhanced Saga pattern, a transaction coordination framework that manages local transactions with compensating actions. We implemented both methods in a microservice-based application deployed across distributed nodes and assessed their performance under various load conditions and failure scenarios. The results show that integrating Paxos significantly improves throughput and reduces latency, offering strong consistency and robust fault tolerance. In contrast, the enhanced Saga pattern, while effective in managing compensating transactions and maintaining eventual consistency, demonstrated lower performance in high-load environments. These findings highlight the trade-offs between consensus-based and coordination-based transaction management in microservice architectures and provide practical insights for system designers seeking scalable and reliable solutions.