Upgrade to Pro
— share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
Microservices are an antipattern
Search
Lindsay Holmwood
April 18, 2019
Technology
0
240
Microservices are an antipattern
Lindsay Holmwood
April 18, 2019
Tweet
Share
More Decks by Lindsay Holmwood
See All by Lindsay Holmwood
Protecting sensitive data in DynamoDB with searchable encryption
auxesis
0
18
Your API ain't as secure as you think
auxesis
0
150
Footguns and factorisation: how to make users of your cryptographic library successful
auxesis
0
1.5k
Levelling up database security by thinking in APIs
auxesis
0
160
How to thwart your devops transformation with counterinsurgency doctrine
auxesis
1
100
Mirrors, networks, and boundaries
auxesis
0
140
Managing remotely, while remotely managing
auxesis
13
4.6k
Testing Conway’s Law in open source communities
auxesis
6
820
Building and scaling effective distributed teams
auxesis
4
260
Other Decks in Technology
See All in Technology
マイクロサービスへの5年間 ぶっちゃけ何をしてどうなったか
joker1007
22
8.3k
Redshift認可、アップデートでどう変わった?
handy
1
100
アラフォーおじさん、はじめてre:Inventに行く / A 40-Something Guy’s First re:Invent Adventure
kaminashi
0
170
松尾研LLM講座2025 応用編Day3「軽量化」 講義資料
aratako
11
4.4k
普段使ってるClaude Skillsの紹介(by Notebooklm)
zerebom
8
2.3k
MySQLとPostgreSQLのコレーション / Collation of MySQL and PostgreSQL
tmtms
1
1.3k
意外と知らない状態遷移テストの世界
nihonbuson
PRO
1
290
Oracle Database@AWS:サービス概要のご紹介
oracle4engineer
PRO
2
420
まだ間に合う! Agentic AI on AWSの現在地をやさしく一挙おさらい
minorun365
17
2.9k
20251203_AIxIoTビジネス共創ラボ_第4回勉強会_BP山崎.pdf
iotcomjpadmin
0
140
2025年のデザインシステムとAI 活用を振り返る
leveragestech
0
360
Agent Skillsがハーネスの垣根を超える日
gotalab555
6
4.5k
Featured
See All Featured
The MySQL Ecosystem @ GitHub 2015
samlambert
251
13k
Designing Experiences People Love
moore
143
24k
Redefining SEO in the New Era of Traffic Generation
szymonslowik
1
170
Done Done
chrislema
186
16k
Measuring & Analyzing Core Web Vitals
bluesmoon
9
710
Fight the Zombie Pattern Library - RWD Summit 2016
marcelosomers
234
17k
How To Speak Unicorn (iThemes Webinar)
marktimemedia
1
350
What the history of the web can teach us about the future of AI
inesmontani
PRO
0
380
What's in a price? How to price your products and services
michaelherold
246
13k
Stewardship and Sustainability of Urban and Community Forests
pwiseman
0
73
Java REST API Framework Comparison - PWX 2021
mraible
34
9k
Into the Great Unknown - MozCon
thekraken
40
2.2k
Transcript
Microservices are an antipattern Lindsay Holmwood
Microservices are an antipattern Lindsay Holmwood
Why microservices?
Design strategy to manage complexity in our systems
Design strategy to manage complexity in our systems
If the system or team get too big, we: 1.
Split the system
If the system or team get too big, we: 1.
Split the system
If the system or team get too big, we: 2.
Split the team
Popularised by the devops movement
Popularised by the devops movement
CD + containers were the drivers
CD + containers were the drivers
In use at the big end of town
“It works for Google, so we’ll scale it down and
get the same benefits!”
We cargo culted a design strategy without understanding the tradeoffs
Real talk: The smallest microservice at Google probably does more
transactions than the largest service in your organisation.
Real talk: We took a pattern for managing huge systems,
extrapolated it down to our size, and hoped it worked.
Real talk: Hope is not a strategy.
Some downsides you should think about:
Some downsides you should think about:
You’re replacing function calls with network calls
Source: “Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud” by Brendan Gregg
Is that latency worth it?
What hard limits are you imposing to control unpredictability?
Microservices are a systems multiplier for your shitty code
None
How is your ◦ modularity? ◦ isolation? ◦ encapsulation?
Refactor first
Then scale when the performance impacts users
1. Make it work 2. Make it right 3. Make
it fast
1. Make it work 2. Make it right 3. Make
it fast Refactor
1. Make it work 2. Make it right 3. Make
it fast Refactor Microservice
Microservices have a higher cost of ownership
Operational requirements: ◦ CD pipelines ◦ Network & compute &
storage ◦ Logging ◦ Monitoring ◦ Tracing & observability
Security requirements: ◦ Authentication ◦ Identity ◦ Monitoring
This costs more (both in systems bills and engineering time)
But what if we just… didn’t?
But what if we just… didn’t?
Problems are harder to debug
Incidents have > MTTD & MTTR
Delivery slows
Increased communication + coordination overhead between teams
Sequencing of changes across multiple services
Poor service boundaries? You have to get multiple teams moving
in the same direction to deliver a change.
Stakeholders for technical changes are rarely exclusively technical
Requires coordination across disciplines like product, design, marketing, analytics, …
You need established and understood communication paths
You need established and understood change coordination
You need established cultural norms for resolving conflict
Microservices are an effective way to separate concerns in complex
systems
Microservices are an inefficient way of organising people in organisations
< 1,000 people
The smaller the org, the smaller the return
You are not Google/Netflix/ AWS/Facebook/…
Do the job you have, not the job you want.
Thank you! (fight me)