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
Sponsored
·
Your Podcast. Everywhere. Effortlessly.
Share. Educate. Inspire. Entertain. You do you. We'll handle the rest.
→
Lindsay Holmwood
April 18, 2019
Technology
250
0
Share
Microservices are an antipattern
Lindsay Holmwood
April 18, 2019
More Decks by Lindsay Holmwood
See All by Lindsay Holmwood
Protecting sensitive data in DynamoDB with searchable encryption
auxesis
0
27
Your API ain't as secure as you think
auxesis
0
170
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
180
How to thwart your devops transformation with counterinsurgency doctrine
auxesis
1
120
Mirrors, networks, and boundaries
auxesis
0
160
Managing remotely, while remotely managing
auxesis
13
4.7k
Testing Conway’s Law in open source communities
auxesis
6
860
Building and scaling effective distributed teams
auxesis
4
280
Other Decks in Technology
See All in Technology
プラットフォームエンジニアリングの実践 - AWS コンテナサービスで構築する社内プラットフォーム / AWS Containers Platform Meetup #1
literalice
1
210
ネットワーク運用を楽にするAWS DevOps Agent活用法!! / 20260421 Masaki Okuda
shift_evolve
PRO
2
230
AWS Transform CustomでIaCコードを自由自在に変換しよう
duelist2020jp
0
140
[最強DB講義]推薦システム | 評価編
recsyslab
PRO
0
110
扱える不確実性を増やしていく - スタートアップEMが考える「任せ方」
kadoppe
0
320
AI駆動1on1〜AIに自分を育ててもらう〜
yoshiakiyasuda
0
150
M5Stack CoreS3とZephyr(RTOS)で Edge AIっぽいことしてみた
iotengineer22
0
290
No Types Needed, Just Callable Method Check
dak2
1
1.9k
目的ファーストのハーネス設計 ~ハーネスの変更容易性を高めるための優先順位~
gotalab555
8
2.4k
「SaaSの次の時代」に重要性を増すステークホルダーマネジメントの要諦 ~解像度を圧倒的に高めPdMの価値を最大化させる方法~
kakehashi
PRO
3
2.5k
今年注目する!データ分析プラットフォームでのAIの活用
nayuts
0
160
MLOps導入のための組織作りの第一歩
akasan
0
370
Featured
See All Featured
Claude Code どこまでも/ Claude Code Everywhere
nwiizo
65
55k
Improving Core Web Vitals using Speculation Rules API
sergeychernyshev
21
1.4k
JavaScript: Past, Present, and Future - NDC Porto 2020
reverentgeek
52
5.9k
The Mindset for Success: Future Career Progression
greggifford
PRO
0
310
Agile Actions for Facilitating Distributed Teams - ADO2019
mkilby
0
180
Heart Work Chapter 1 - Part 1
lfama
PRO
6
35k
The AI Revolution Will Not Be Monopolized: How open-source beats economies of scale, even for LLMs
inesmontani
PRO
3
3.4k
Imperfection Machines: The Place of Print at Facebook
scottboms
270
14k
Navigating Team Friction
lara
192
16k
SERP Conf. Vienna - Web Accessibility: Optimizing for Inclusivity and SEO
sarafernandez
2
1.4k
The Hidden Cost of Media on the Web [PixelPalooza 2025]
tammyeverts
2
280
Ruling the World: When Life Gets Gamed
codingconduct
0
210
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)