Spring Cloud Vs Spring Boot Actuator

Spring Cloud

Spring Cloud’s main purpose is to give tools and services for managing and making distributed systems, especially in a microservices architecture. The developer wants to speed up the process of building patterns in distributed systems, these tools can fulfill their requirement. They include almost all from the management of configuration and service discovery to circuit breakers, intelligent routing, micro-proxy, short-lived microservices, and control bus, etc. In short, this Spring Cloud collective group of libraries and frameworks can be used for making and managing of cloud-based, distributed system.

Spring Cloud has a vast range of features that make a developer’s life very easy and smooth. e.g. services can seamlessly discover and share among each other, all credit goes to the convenience provided by the Netflix Eureka (Java-based open-source project that provides a RESTful interface for service) and similar implementations, and this is what we call Service Discovery, one of the key features of Spring cloud. Similarly, Configuration Management where Centralized and dynamic configurations are managed with the help of spring cloud configuration. Circuit Breaker delivers ways to control the failure cascades that is the circuit Breaker pattern.

Features like Distributed/versioned configuration, Service registration and discovery, Routing, and Service-to-service calls, etc. are some most important key features of Spring Cloud.

In Dependency configuration in order to use Spring Cloud BOM to Your Application Inside our application.

<properties>
    <spring-cloud.version>2022.0.1</spring-cloud.version>
</properties>
<dependencyManagement>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.cloud</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-cloud-dependencies</artifactId>
            <version>${spring.cloud-version}</version>
            <type>pom</type>
            <scope>import</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</dependencyManagement>

You can refer to this article for more details: Spring Cloud

Spring Boot Actuator

Spring Boot Actuator’s main aim is to adding production-ready elements to the Spring Boot applications. It mainly helps in monitoring and managing the app once it is made to production.

Making the app and managing the app are the two most important parts of the application life cycle. That is why it is always recommended to monitor the app in both cases. So, Spring boot provides actuator dependency that helps in monitoring and making processes.

Spring boot actuator works in two phases first one is monitoring, and the second one is configuring, inside the monitoring spring-boot application comes and inside the configuration application.properties or application.yaml.

Because of the actuators in Applications reduce downtime, boost productivity, improve the security and increase the customer satisfaction.

This Spring boot actuator gives us detailed health info about the app status and it’s all connected services i.e. the Application health checks, it provides us with many different metrics to observe the implementation of the app i.e. the Environment information and Matrics collection. The main aim is not on the exchange between services, but rather on their respective performance and manageability.

In Dependency configuration in order to use Actuator Inside our application in pom.xml.

<dependencies>
   <dependency>
       <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
       <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-actuator</artifactId>
   </dependency>
</dependencies>

You can refer to this article for more details: Spring Boot Actuator

Difference between Spring Cloud and Spring Boot Actuator

Parameter	Spring Cloud	Spring Boot Actuator
Main Aim	Its main aim is making the development of microservices and distributed systems easy.	Its main Aim is to provide features(production-ready) for managing and monitoring the apps.
Application type	Standalone based.	Microservice based.
Environment	No direct responsibility for giving out details about the environment (i.e. Runtime environment).	Spring Boot Actuator insights us into the application environment.
Management of Log	Indirectly deals with application logging.	It allows application logging with these features like dynamic management and configuration.
Health tracking system	No proper monitoring for health, use an Actuator.	The actuator gives us proper detailed health monitoring system of the application.
Use cases and Dependency	Spring Cloud extends Spring Boot mainly for microservices.	Spring Boot Actuator is a direct part of Spring Boot, and this is capable of working insights as well.
Custom feature	Not focus on adding the custom feature	It gives us the feature to add custom features in order to check our application.
Load Balancing feature	Distribute the task evenly among microservices.	Do NOT help in distributing among services.

Similarities between Spring Cloud and Spring Boot Actuator

• Both Spring Cloud and Spring Boot Actuator are essential parts of the Spring framework. They are created to meet the features of Spring Boot, improving its capabilities in their fields.
• Spring Cloud and Spring Boot Actuator both are tools that help in monitoring and managing of the app life cycle. Spring Boot Actuator gives us the tools for managing and monitoring, while Spring Cloud concentrates on delivering detailed insights and control capabilities for particular apps.
• Spring Cloud and Spring Boot Actuator are developed to seamlessly integrate with different Spring projects. This integration guarantees an easy and efficient development method within the Spring ecosystem. i.e. Similarity in Integration with Other Spring Projects.
• Spring Cloud and Spring Boot Actuator have huge community support. i.e., the similarity in huge Community and Support, Document, tech support availability
• They both provide developers with tools and features for the creation, deployment and continued management of apps. I.e. similarities in Ease of Development and Maintenance and enhanced application Performance and Health.

Frequently Asked Questions – Spring Cloud VS Spring Boot Actuator

Q. What is Spring Cloud in simple words?

Spring Cloud is a collection of tools that provide solutions to common patterns in used mostly in microservices architectures, and distributed systems, such as configuration management, service discovery, circuit breakers, etc.

Q. What is Spring Boot Actuator in simple words?

The Spring Boot Actuator is one of the key parts of the Spring Boot framework. Health checks, metrics, environment info, etc. Spring Boot Actuator provides a series of features for monitoring and managing applications.

Q. Is it possible to use Spring Cloud and Spring Boot Actuator together?

Yes, it is possible to use them together and, they are used together very often.

Q. Is there any prerequisite for using Spring Cloud and Spring Boot Actuator?

Basic knowledge of the Spring Boot framework is important for both Spring Cloud and Spring Boot Actuator, and knowledge of microservices architecture helps utilize Spring Cloud.