All is not completely rosy in microservice-land. It is often a sign of an architectural approach’s maturity that in addition to the emergence of well established principles and practices, that anti-patterns also begin to be identified and classified. In this talk we introduce seven deadly sins that if left unchecked could easily ruin your next microservices project... This talk will take a tour of some of the nastiest anti-patterns in microservices, giving you the tools to not only avoid but also slay these demons before they tie up your project in their own special brand of hell. Topics covered include: Pride - selfishly ignoring the new requirements for testing; Envy - introducing inappropriate intimacy within services by creating a shared domain model; Wrath - failing to deal with the inevitable bad things that occur within a distributed system; Sloth - composing services in a lazy fashion, which ultimately leads to the creation of a “Distributed Monolith”; and Lust - embracing the latest and greatest technology without evaluating the operational impact incurred by these choices.

1. The SeVEN DEADLY SINS OF MICRoservices
Daniel Bryant
@danielbryantuk
Container Solutions London
(WITH Credit to Tareq Abedrabbo, OPENCREDO)

2. The Seven Deadly Sins
• 1. LUST …
• 2. GLUTTONY
• 3. GREED…
• 4. SLOTH
• 5. WRATH
• 6. ENVY
• 7. PRIDE
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

3. The Seven Deadly Sins (of Microservices)
• 1. LUST - Using the latest and greatest tech…
• 2. GLUTTONY - Excessive communication protocols
• 3. GREED - All your service are belong to us…
• 4. SLOTH - Creating a distributed monolith
• 5. WRATH - Blowing up when bad things happen
• 6. ENVY - The shared single domain fallacy
• 7. PRIDE - testing in the world of transience
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

4. Who Am I?
• OpenCredo / Container Solutions
ü Agile, CI/CD, DevOps
ü Microservices and cloud
ü Docker, Mesos and Kubernetes
• London Java Community Associate
• Adopt OpenJDK and JSR
• InfoQ Editor and DZone MVB
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

5. So, What is a microservice?
“Loosely coupled service oriented architecture
with bounded contexts”
Adrian Cockcroft
“Applications that fit in your head”
James Lewis
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

6. 1. Lust - Using THE LATEST and Greatest Tech…
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@danielbryantuk

7. Microservices...
They solve all of our problems, Right?
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@danielbryantuk

8. No... Not necessarily good for speed
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk
skillsma7er.com/skillscasts/6143-­‐microservices-­‐for-­‐speed
HOT
OFF
THE
PRESS!!
marJnfowler.com/bliki/
MonolithFirst.html

9. No... Check your architecture/design skills
“If you can't build a [well-structured] monolith,
what makes you think microservices are the answer?”
Simon Brown
(bit.ly/1n7D0vp)
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

10. No... Check your architecture/design skills
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

11. No... Operational maturity is vital
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk
marJnfowler.com/bliki/MicroservicePrerequisites.html

12. Microservices are very useful
But check your use case...
...Evaluation is a key skill
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@danielbryantuk

13. Evaluation
“I will postpone using this shiny new framework until
my peers have validated the proposed benefits with
rigorous scientific experiments”
- Said by no programmer
…ever
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

14. Pick Your (Technical) Battles...…
• As Dan McKinley says, “Choose Boring Technology”
– Optimize globally across organisation
• Java and Spring (Boot) are perfectly acceptable
• ... As are tomcat/jetty
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

15. Matt Raible’s Comparison Framework
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@danielbryantuk

16. 2. GLUTTONY - Excessive Communication PROTOCOLS
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@danielbryantuk

17. Standardize Across the Organization
• Choose one synchronous protocol
– e.g. JSON over HTTP
• Choose one asynchronous protocol
– e.g. RabbitMQ
Don’t gold-plate, but know your options: ProtoBuf, Thrift, ZeroMQ, MQTT
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

18. Enterprise communication (Beam me up?)
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk
www.dzone.com/research/guide-­‐to-­‐enterprise-­‐integraJon

19. 3. GREED - All your service are Belong to us…
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

20. How Do Committees Invent?
“organizations which design systems ...
are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the
communication structures of these organizations”
- Melvin Conway, 1968
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@danielbryantuk

21. 19/06/15
@danielbryantuk
Dev
QA
Ops
Hand-­‐off
delays
Hand-­‐off
delays
Slow
feedback
Slow
feedback
Lack
of
cohesion,
shared
understanding
and
joint
accountability
Front-­‐end
Database
Middleware

22. 19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

23. Cross-functional Teams
• Spotify (bit.ly/1C46ZKo)
– Culture
• Amazon (bit.ly/1F3Dgkm)
– Communication
• Gilt (gi.lt/1rgyWvO)
– Strategic alignment
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@danielbryantuk

24. Conway was Telling the Truth... Deal with it!
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@danielbryantuk

25. 4. SLOTH - Creating a distributed monolith
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@danielbryantuk

26. Can’t Deploy Services Independently?
Check your ‘bounded contexts’ and/or data ‘fault-lines’
(Also, check you have separated deploy and release)
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

27. Can’t Deploy Services Independently?
• Schema-first design
– Michael Bryzek (Gilt): APIdoc
• Consumer-driven Contracts FTW
– Martin Fowler: CDC - A Service Evolution Pattern
“CDC is BDD for microservices”
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

28. Architecture - not a Dirty Word
• Technical leadership (bit.ly/1EUwpLl)
• Communication (bit.ly/1Ia3u8o)
• Promote shared understanding
• ‘Just enough’ up front design
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

29. 5. WRATH - Blowing up when bad things happen
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@danielbryantuk

30. Bring in Michael Nygard (Or some monkeys)
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@danielbryantuk

31. OPERATIONAL Concerns: Technical
• Continuous delivery is a microservice prerequisite
– Rapid provisioning
– Basic monitoring
– Rapid application deployment
• I.E. Agile & DevOps
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

32. Operational Concerns: Social
• Failure happens all the time... Get used to it!
• 'Gameday' or 'Disaster in recovery testing' (Real) Scenarios
• Failure injection testing (FIT):
– Building 'Failure as a Service' at Netflix without the Simian Army
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

33. Share the pain...
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@danielbryantuk

34. “Dev-on-call”
An occasional spike to the head
is a good thing...
...metaphorically speaking
• You write it, you run it
– Accountability
– Shared responsibility
– Communication
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

35. 6. ENVY - The shared SINGLE domain fallacy
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

36. One Model to Rule Them All...
• One model…
– Breaks encapsulation
– Introduces coupling
• Know your DDD
– Entities
– Value Objects
– Aggregates and Roots
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

37. But... how do I generate Reports?
• Aggregated reporting pattern
– Pull by service
• Data Pumps
– Push (Event sourcing?)
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

38. 7. PRIDE - testing in the world of transience
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

39. People are surprisingly quiet about this...
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk
marJnfowler.com/arJcles/microservice-­‐tesJng/

40. Testing With Microservices is Difficult...
• Invest in your build pipeline testing
– Serenity BDD
– Wiremock / Saboteur
– Jenkins Performance plugin
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

41. Testing With Microservices is Difficult...
• Do it in production(?)
– Netflix
– Hailo
– Gilt
• This is an advanced pattern!
– Automation is essential!
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

42. Summary
• 1. LUST - Using the latest and greatest tech…
• 2. GLUTTONY - Excessive communication protocols
• 3. GREED - All your service are belong to us…
• 4. SLOTH - Creating a distributed monolith
• 5. WRATH - Blowing up when bad things happen
• 6. ENVY - The shared single domain fallacy
• 7. PRIDE - testing in the world of transience
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

43. 19/06/15
@danielbryantuk

44. THANKS...
@danielbryantuk
daniel.bryant@container-solutions.com
@containersoluti
www.container-solutions.com
(Credit to Tareq Abedrabbo for inspiration/guidance)
19/06/15
@danielbryantuk