Microservices are an antipattern

Transcript

1. 1.

   Microservices are an antipattern Lindsay Holmwood

2. 2.

   Microservices are an antipattern Lindsay Holmwood

3. 3.

   Why microservices?

4. 4.

   Design strategy to manage complexity in our systems

5. 5.

   Design strategy to manage complexity in our systems

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   If the system or team get too big, we: 1.

   Split the system
7. 7.

   If the system or team get too big, we: 1.

   Split the system
8. 8.

   If the system or team get too big, we: 2.

   Split the team
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   Popularised by the devops movement

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    Popularised by the devops movement

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    CD + containers were the drivers

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    CD + containers were the drivers

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    In use at the big end of town

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    “It works for Google, so we’ll scale it down and

    get the same benefits!”
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    We cargo culted a design strategy without understanding the tradeoffs

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    Real talk: The smallest microservice at Google probably does more

    transactions than the largest service in your organisation.
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    Real talk: We took a pattern for managing huge systems,

    extrapolated it down to our size, and hoped it worked.
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    Real talk: Hope is not a strategy.

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    Some downsides you should think about:

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    Some downsides you should think about:

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    You’re replacing function calls with network calls

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    Source: “Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud” by Brendan Gregg

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    Is that latency worth it?

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    What hard limits are you imposing to control unpredictability?

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    Microservices are a systems multiplier for your shitty code

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    None
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    How is your ◦ modularity? ◦ isolation? ◦ encapsulation?

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    Refactor first

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    Then scale when the performance impacts users

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    1. Make it work 2. Make it right 3. Make

    it fast
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    1. Make it work 2. Make it right 3. Make

    it fast Refactor
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    1. Make it work 2. Make it right 3. Make

    it fast Refactor Microservice
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    Microservices have a higher cost of ownership

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    Operational requirements: ◦ CD pipelines ◦ Network & compute &

    storage ◦ Logging ◦ Monitoring ◦ Tracing & observability
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    Security requirements: ◦ Authentication ◦ Identity ◦ Monitoring

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    This costs more (both in systems bills and engineering time)

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    But what if we just… didn’t?

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    But what if we just… didn’t?

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    Problems are harder to debug

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    Incidents have > MTTD & MTTR

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    Delivery slows

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    Increased communication + coordination overhead between teams

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    Sequencing of changes across multiple services

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    Poor service boundaries? You have to get multiple teams moving

    in the same direction to deliver a change.
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    Stakeholders for technical changes are rarely exclusively technical

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    Requires coordination across disciplines like product, design, marketing, analytics, …

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    You need established and understood communication paths

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    You need established and understood change coordination

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    You need established cultural norms for resolving conflict

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    Microservices are an effective way to separate concerns in complex

    systems
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    Microservices are an inefficient way of organising people in organisations

    < 1,000 people
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    The smaller the org, the smaller the return

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    You are not Google/Netflix/ AWS/Facebook/…

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    Do the job you have, not the job you want.

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    Thank you! (fight me)