1.
Asanka Abeysinghe
Cell-based Architecture
An Emerging Architecture Pattern for Agile Integration
Vice President, Architecture - CTO Office
WSO2 Inc.

2.
Motivation

3.
Centralized & Layered
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4.
Not enough support for Agility

5.
Brownfield > Greenfield
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Legacy, monolithic Microservices, sprawl

6.
Reference Implementations
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7.
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Underutilization of the Technology

8.
Gap: architecture | development | deployment
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9.
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Dependency management

10.
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Architecture Patterns

11.
Timeline

12.
Background: Layered Architecture

13.
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A platform with an agile team
100 APIs, 60 message flows, 80 services, n DBs
Multi-tenanted, 3 active tenants
First release after 3 years

14.
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Rise of Microservices

15.
Pragmatic Microservices
Netflix: APIs
Uber: Edge Gateway
eBay: API Facade
Gartner: Mini Services

16.
Background: Layered Architecture with MSA

17.
Background: Segmented Architecture
BS-1 BS-2 BS-n
G-1 G-2
US-1 US-n

18.
Platform of Platforms
Platform (shared capabilities)
Project1
Project2
Project3
Projectn
Platform (shared capabilities)
Project1
Project2
Project3
Projectn
Platform (shared capabilities)
Project1
Project2
Project3
Projectn
Platform (shared capabilities)
Project1
Project2
Project3
Projectn
CI/CD
User
Store

19.
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20.
Making of……
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21.
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22.
2014
2018

23.
Building the
Concept

24.
Business vs technical services
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25.
Service: Technical definition
A code exposes through an
interface that describes a
collection of operations that
are network accessible using
a standardized messaging
protocol.

26.
Microservice: Technical definition
A microservice must have a
single purpose and be loosely
coupled in design and
deployed independently of
other microservices.
"Micro" is a concept of scope
rather than size.

27.
Service: Business definition
Software components that
can be spontaneously
discovered, combined, and
recombined to provide a
solution to a business
problem.

28.
Microservice: Business definition
Microservices is an approach to
application development in
which a large application is built
as a suite of modular
components or services.
These services are built around
business capabilities.

29.
Group of (Micro)services

30.
The cell is the basic structural,
functional, and
biological unit of all known
living organisms

31.
Cell-based
Reference Architecture

32.
Component: Atomic Units
A component represents a
process or business logic
running in a container,
serverless environment, or an
existing runtime. A component
is designed based on a specific
scope, which can be
independently run and reused
at the runtime.

33.
Cell: Units of Enterprise Architecture
A cell is a collection of
components, grouped from
design and implementation
into deployment. A cell is
independently deployable,
manageable, and observable.

34.
Cell:Component
1:M
1:1

35.
Connected Cells
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36.
Control Plane:
- Signaling of the network
- Makes decisions about the traffic flow
Data Plane:
- Forwards traffic between hops
- Takes data packets
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37.
Inter and Intra Cell communication

38.
Connected Cells
Cell gateway (ingress)
Sidecar (egress)
Adaptor (egress)
Ambassador (egress)

39.
API-centric Architecture

40.
Gateway Pattern
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41.
Automated Governance (Re)-enables Flow
Policy Store
(Registry)
Observability
(Monitoring/
Analytics)
Policy
Enforcement
(GW)
Automated governance is made
of three things:
A source of truth:
Policy store/registry
Enforcement of the policy
Gateway or plugin attempting to keep
the desired state
Observability
How close to the desired state are we?

42.
Security of Cells
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43.
Security of Cells

44.
Developer Experience (DX)
of a Cell

45.
Creating Cells
Brand new Cell
Existing (micro)services
Update an existing Cell
Create a new version

46.
Lifecycle of a Cell

47.
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48.
Structured Agility
Versioned Components
Versioned Cells
Dependency managed
Autowired
Reusable
Enhanced MSA & CNA

49.
Cell-based Enterprise
Architecture

50.
Reference Implementation L0

51.
Reference Implementation L1

52.
Cells and Podular Organizations

53.
Measure the success
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54.
https://www.tasktop.com/blog/5-best-metrics-youve-never-met/
https://dzone.com/articles/reducing-mttr
Mean Time to Repair

55.
Self-contained
Deployable as a unit
Independently elastic
Data plane and control plane
Summary: Cell-based Reference Architecture

56.
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Just a (steady) start
https://github.com/wso2/reference-architecture

57.
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From Theory to Practice
https://github.com/wso2/reference-methodology

58.
Transformation is a journey
without a destination. - Marilyn Ferguson
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59.
WSO2.COM
THANK YOU