Moving from A and B to 150 microservices, the journey, and learnings

Are you frustrated working with large, legacy and potentially lethal code bases? We were frustrated too, but in 4-5 years of time, we replaced A (front-end) and B (back-office) system with ~150 microservices. From the days of no tests and clumsy deployment process, we moved to each service with unit tests, CI and deploying with a bot. With the business buying in the process, we enabled the business to reach new heights. This talk reveals that journey and the things we learned along the way.

Transcript

1. Moving from A and B to ~150 microservices, the journey, and learnings Geshan Manandhar Senior Software Engineer (THE ICONIC) @geshan
2. ◉ Senior Software Engineer ◦ Tech solution provider ◉ Agile follower ◉ Conditional microservices believer whoami
3. I am from Kathmandu, Nepal
4. I was working for a GFG venture in Middle East
5. Now I work at THE ICONIC
6. And I came here from the future, a future without legacy monoliths
7. Who ‘does not like’ working with legacy apps/monoliths?
8. What to expect from this talk?
10. What is microservices architecture?
11. “ “Microservice architectural style is an approach to developing a single application as a suite of small services, each running in its own process and communicating with lightweight mechanisms, often an HTTP resource API. These services are built around business capabilities and independently deployable by fully automated deployment machinery” - Martin Fowler Source: https://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html
12. “ “Microservices is an architectural style that structures an application as a collection of loosely coupled services, which implement business capabilities. The microservice architecture enables the continuous delivery/deployment of large, complex applications. It also enables an organization to evolve its technology stack” - Chris Richardson Source: http://microservices.io/
13. Microservices at Namshi
14. From 2 monoliths, to SOA (C) to Microservices, in past 4-5 years
15. Migrating to a REST based JSON API triggered a transformation
16. Stateless auth is a blessing, JWS in a cookie saved hassles.
17. A chunk of the backend is in PHP, other apps are built with NodeJs + Js
18. There are ~150 microservices at Namshi, with ~10 backend engineers
19. OMS Studio (Prod) Wallet Shipments Catalog QC Pick It Order Exporter WeBuy Cart Some of the microservices
20. Moving to microservices enabled to ship changes faster
21. Docker and kubernetes really helped to have a stable infrastructure
22. 9 out of 10 applications at Namshi are written in Node Js
23. Microservices != free lunch, lots of configs come with it
24. How to get started with Microservices
25. Start with an opportunity to extract out a business feature/function
26. Transform a pain point into a new service
27. Solve a small part of the issue, collaboratively. Roll out working software
28. Think out of the box, don’t code a microservice like a monolith
29. Feature flags and canary deployments keep us on the safe side
30. Key Takeaways
31. Requires inter team communication, business needs to buy into the idea
32. Replacing frontend can take ‘X’ months, back-office will take years
33. Design your systems with resilience in mind from the beginning
34. How small is micro? Yes, Your service can be of ~100 lines of your code
35. It is about speed and agility of software delivery
36. Questions welcome :) THE ICONIC is hiring. You can find me at ◉ @geshan (geshan@gmail.com) ◉ Geshan.com.np ◉ Slides: http://bit.ly/ab-to-ms Thanks! Presentation template by SlidesCarnival
37. Credits/References ◉ https://pixabay.com/en/primate-ape-thinking-mimic-view-1019101/ ◉ https://pixabay.com/en/running-sprint-cinder-track-498257/ ◉ https://pixabay.com/en/stacked-stones-cairn-rock-balance-1007944/ ◉ https://pixabay.com/en/lego-stones-build-toy-622602/ ◉ https://pixabay.com/en/tractor-vehicles-farm-machinery-387275/ ◉ https://pixabay.com/en/workplace-team-business-meeting-1245776/ ◉ https://pixabay.com/en/network-server-system-2402637/ ◉ https://pixabay.com/en/logs-wood-timber-lumber-woodpile-498538/ ◉ https://pixabay.com/en/sunset-sea-the-sun-clouds-1603974/ ◉ https://pixabay.com/en/change-arrows-clouds-sky-direction-948024/ ◉ https://pixabay.com/en/cheetah-africa-namibia-cat-run-2859581/ ◉ Kathmandu - https://pixabay.com/en/nepal-kathmandu-buddhism-pagodas-306621/ ◉ https://pixabay.com/en/characters-shield-note-street-sign-3533352/ ◉ https://www.flickr.com/photos/brianandjaclyn/4137335458 ◉ https://pixabay.com/en/time-tiempo-count-day-future-699965/ ◉ https://pixabay.com/en/doors-choices-choose-open-decision-1767563/