Microservices are an antipattern

Transcript

1. Microservices are
   an antipattern
   Lindsay Holmwood
   

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2. Microservices are
   an antipattern
   Lindsay Holmwood
   

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3. Why microservices?
   

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4. Design strategy to
   manage complexity
   in our systems
   

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5. Design strategy to
   manage complexity
   in our systems
   

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

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

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

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9. Popularised by the
   devops movement
   

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10. Popularised by the
    devops movement
    

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11. CD + containers
    were the drivers
    

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12. CD + containers
    were the drivers
    

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13. In use at the big end of town
    

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14. “It works for
    Google, so we’ll
    scale it down and
    get the same
    benefits!”
    

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15. We cargo culted a
    design strategy
    without understanding
    the tradeoffs
    

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16. Real talk:
    The smallest microservice
    at Google probably does
    more transactions than the
    largest service in your
    organisation.
    

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17. Real talk:
    We took a pattern for
    managing huge systems,
    extrapolated it down to
    our size, and hoped it
    worked.
    

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18. Real talk:
    Hope is not a strategy.
    

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19. Some downsides
    you should think
    about:
    

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20. Some downsides
    you should think
    about:
    

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21. You’re replacing
    function calls with
    network calls
    

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

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23. Is that latency
    worth it?
    

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24. What hard limits are
    you imposing to control
    unpredictability?
    

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25. Microservices are a
    systems multiplier
    for your shitty code
    

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27. How is your
    ◦ modularity?
    ◦ isolation?
    ◦ encapsulation?
    

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28. Refactor
    first
    

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29. Then scale when the
    performance
    impacts users
    

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

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

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

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33. Microservices have
    a higher cost of
    ownership
    

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34. Operational requirements:
    ◦ CD pipelines
    ◦ Network & compute & storage
    ◦ Logging
    ◦ Monitoring
    ◦ Tracing & observability
    

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35. Security requirements:
    ◦ Authentication
    ◦ Identity
    ◦ Monitoring
    

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

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37. But what if we
    just… didn’t?
    

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38. But what if we
    just… didn’t?
    

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39. Problems are
    harder to debug
    

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40. Incidents have
    > MTTD & MTTR
    

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41. Delivery slows
    

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42. Increased
    communication +
    coordination overhead
    between teams
    

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43. Sequencing of
    changes across
    multiple services
    

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44. Poor service boundaries?
    You have to get multiple
    teams moving in the same
    direction to deliver a change.
    

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45. Stakeholders for technical changes
    are rarely exclusively technical
    

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

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47. You need
    established and understood
    communication paths
    

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48. You need
    established and understood
    change coordination
    

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49. You need
    established cultural norms
    for resolving conflict
    

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50. Microservices are an
    effective way to
    separate concerns in
    complex systems
    

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51. Microservices are an
    inefficient way of
    organising people in
    organisations
    < 1,000 people
    

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52. The smaller the org,
    the smaller the return
    

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

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

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55. Thank you!
    (fight me)
    

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