Netflix OSS — Eureka and Zuul for Microservices

Netflix operates hundreds of microservices for 70 million users. They open-sourced their internal tools. Eureka for service discovery, Zuul as an API gateway, Ribbon for client-side load balancing — and Spring Cloud integrates it all into the Spring ecosystem.

Eureka: Service Registry¶

Each service registers with the Eureka server and sends regular heartbeats. Clients query Eureka for available instances. With Spring Cloud Netflix: @EnableEurekaClient and configuration in application.yml.

Zuul: API Gateway¶

Zuul is an edge service — the single entry point for clients. It routes requests to the correct services and adds authentication, rate limiting, and monitoring. Pre-filters and post-filters handle cross-cutting concerns.

zuul:
  routes:
    users:
      path: /api/users/**
      serviceId: user-service
    orders:
      path: /api/orders/**
      serviceId: order-service

Ribbon: Client-Side Load Balancing¶

Instead of a centralized load balancer, Ribbon distributes traffic on the client side. It queries Eureka for instances and selects one using round-robin. This eliminates the load balancer as a single point of failure.

Spring Cloud Netflix¶

Spring Cloud integrates the Netflix stack into Spring Boot applications. Annotations, auto-configuration, shared configuration. An enterprise Java team feels right at home.

Netflix OSS Is a Proven Stack¶

Battle-tested at massive scale. Spring Cloud integration makes it accessible for Java enterprise developers. We recommend it for Spring-based microservices.