Managing Distributed Sessions in Spring Microservices

Alexander Obregon
8 min readOct 12, 2023
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Introduction

When building microservices using the Spring framework, one of the challenges developers often face is managing user sessions across different services. In a monolithic application, session management is relatively straightforward. However, in a microservices architecture, where multiple services need to access user session data, things can get a bit complex.

In this article, we’ll explore how to effectively manage distributed sessions in Spring microservices, ensuring a seamless user experience without compromising the scalability and robustness of the system.

The Need for Distributed Sessions

The concept of a user session is foundational in modern web applications. It is a way for applications to maintain user-specific data across multiple requests. A typical monolithic application manages sessions effortlessly by maintaining them in the server’s memory or using a straightforward, centralized data store. However, in a distributed architecture like microservices, the narrative changes, introducing new challenges. Let’s explore these challenges more deeply:

Decentralized Architecture

The fundamental nature of microservices is decentralization. Each microservice can…

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Alexander Obregon

Software Engineer, fervent coder & writer. Devoted to learning & assisting others. Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-obregon-97849b229/