Actuators
Actuators are components in software systems, particularly in microservices and Spring Boot applications, that expose operational information and management endpoints for monitoring and interacting with the application. They provide insights into health, metrics, environment, and configuration, enabling real-time oversight and control without requiring code changes or restarts.
Developers should learn and use actuators when building production-ready applications that require monitoring, management, and operational insights, such as in DevOps or cloud-native environments. They are essential for implementing health checks, gathering performance metrics, and enabling features like graceful shutdowns or configuration updates in microservices architectures.