All is not completely rosy in microservice-land. It’s often a sign of an architectural approach’s maturity that anti-patterns begin to be identified and classified alongside well-established principles and practices. Daniel Bryant introduces seven deadly sins from real projects, which left unchecked could easily ruin your next microservices project. Daniel offers an updated tour of some of the nastiest anti-patterns in microservices from several real-world projects he’s encountered as a consultant, providing a series of anti-pattern “smells” to watch out for and exploring the tools and techniques you need to avoid or mitigate the potential damage. Topics include: Pride: the admission of the challenges with testing in a distributed system Envy: introducing inappropriate intimacy within services by creating a shared “canonical” domain model Wrath: failing to deal with the inevitable bad things that occur when operating new technologies, both from the people and technical aspects Sloth: composing services in a lazy fashion, which ultimately leads to the creation of a "distributed monolith” Lust: embracing the latest and greatest technology without evaluating the operational impact incurred by these choices

1. The Seven (More) DEADLY SINS OF Microservices
@spectolabs
@danielbryantuk

2. Previously, AT Devoxx UK & QCON NYC 2015...
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk
https://www.infoq.com/presentations/7-sins-microservices

3. The Seven (more) Deadly Sins of Microservices
1. LUST - Using the (Unevaluated) latest and greatest tech…
2. GLUTTONY - Communication lock-in
3. GREED - What'S Mine is mine (within the organisation)…
4. SLOTH - Getting lazy with NFRs
5. WRATH - Blowing up when bad things happen
6. ENVY - The shared single domain (and data store) fallacy
7. PRIDE - testing in the world of transience
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

4. @danielbryantuk
• Software developer, CTO at SpectoLabs
• Agile, architecture, CI/CD, Programmable infrastructure
• Java, Go, JS, microservices, cloud, containers
• Continuous delivery of value through effective technology and teams
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk
bit.ly/2jWDSF7

5. 1. Lust - Using THE LATEST and Greatest Tech…
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

6. New technology is great... Until it isn'T
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk
developers with new tech be like
F*cking new technology...
Credit to Michael Hausenblas
This has been me
many times!

7. Evaluation is a key skill...
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

8. Evaluation - are Microservices A good fit?
• “our 'mode TWO' apps are Microservices”
– Middle-management latch on to Buzzword
– New app evolution limited by existing system
– Lipstick on the pig
• Not understanding architecture principles
– Not building around business Functionality
– Creating Mini-monoliths (no twelve factors)
• No Well-defined DevOps / SRE / Ops
– Deployment/ops free-for-all
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

9. Evaluation of tech - The’Spine Model
• Effective conversations make for effective
collaboration
• It's a TOOL Problem
– As a species, we have always been Tool users
and makers.
– We use _____ to get our work done
• People get stuck in a dilemma where equally
plausible options are available
• “Going up the Spine” breaks deadlock http://spinemodel.info/explanation/introduction/

10. AN example: To containerise, or not to containerise?
(dockaH, dockah, dockah... Dockah?)
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

11. Strategy #fail
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

12. Architecture/ops: Expectations versus reality
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk
“DevOps”

13. Choices: Beware of Confirmation bias
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk
https://thehftguy.wordpress.com/2016/11/01/docker-in-production-an-history-of-failure/ http://patrobinson.github.io/2016/11/05/docker-in-production/

14. Evaluation - It'S easy to be tricked
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

15. Evaluation - beware of bias and heuristics
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

16. 2. GLUTTONY - Communication lock-in
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

17. Rpc - not the devil in disguise
• We all Like rest and Json, but...
• Don'T rule out RPC (e.g. grpc)
– the contract (and speed) can be
beneficial
– Human readability of JSON is
over-rated
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

18. Delegation of comms operability
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk
blog.christianposta.com/microservices/the-hardest-
part-of-microservices-calling-your-services/

19. Rpc - not the devil in disguise
• Sometime events are better
– Asynchronous (AP vs CP)
– Event-sourcing, cqrs etc
• Reactive is everywhere
– And Only getting hotter...
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk
www.infoq.com/news/2017/03/microliths-microsystems

20. The ESB is dead - long live the esb!
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

21. The ESB is dead - long live the esb!
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

22. The ESB is dead - long live the esb!
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk
• Is this an ESB?
• Or an API gateway?

23. The ESB is dead - long live the API Gateway!
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk
• Watch for the API Gateway morphing
into an Enterprise service bus
– Loose coupling is vital
• But let me be clear...
– The API Gateway pattern is awesome
– Centralise cross-cutting concerns
– Prevent wheel-reinvention (plugins)
– Check out kong, apigee, Mulesoft etc

24. 3. GREED - What'S mine is mine... (within the organisation)…
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

25. Previously...
• Conway'S Law
• Microservices are about people, as much as they are tech
– Maybe more
– Particularly in a migration / transformation
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

26. We hear this a lot...
“We’ve decided to reform our teams around squads, chapters and guilds”
• Beware of cargo-culting
– Repeat three times “We are not spotify”
• Understand the practices, principles, values etc
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

27. 4. SLOTH - Getting Lazy with NFRs
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

28. Getting lazy with non-Functional Requirements
“The driving technical requirements for a system should be identified early
to ensure they are properly handled in subsequent design”
Aidan Casey
Guiding principles for evolutionary architecture
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

29. Getting lazy with non-Functional Requirements
• The 'ilities' Can be (often) be an afterthought
– Availability, Scalability, auditability, testability etc
• Agile/Lean: Delay decisions to the ‘last responsible moment’
– NewsFlash - Sometimes this is up-front
• It can be costly (or prohibitive) to adapt late in the project
– Microservices don'T make this easier (sometimes more difficult)
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

30. Getting lazy with NFRs - security
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk
www.slideshare.net/spnewman/appsec-microservices-velocity-2016 www.infoq.com/news/2016/08/secure-docker-microservices

31. Testing NFRs in the build pipeline
• Performance and Load testing
– Gatling / jmeter
– Flood.io
• Security testing
– Findsecbugs / OWASP Dependency check
– Bdd-security (OWASP ZAP) / Arachni
– Gauntlt / Serverspec
– Docker Bench for Security / Clair
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

32. 5. WRATH - Blowing up when bad things happen
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

33. Previously - Bring in Michael Nygard (Or some monkeys)
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

34. When bad things happen, people are always involved
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk | @oakinger

35. People Pain point - How does Devops fit into this?
• http://web.devopstopologies.com/
• @ matthewpskelton
• @beerops and @sigje
• Google SRE
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

36. Devops - the 'fullstack engineer' myth
“I'M sorry, but if you'RE not designing the computer chips and
writing the website, then I don'T wanna hear from you”
Charity Majors (@mipsytipsy), CraftConf 2016
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/86181845
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

37. Devops - define responsibilities
• Do you really want to build an
entire microservices platform?
• Focus on what matters
– Ci/CD
– Mechanical sympathy
– Logging
– Monitoring
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

38. Worth considering: Open source PaaS
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

39. 6. ENVY - The shared SINGLE domain (and Data Store) fallacy
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

40. Previously - One Model to Rule Them All...
• One model…
– Breaks encapsulation
– Introduces coupling
• Know your DDD
– Entities
– Value Objects
– Aggregates and Roots
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

41. Context mapping (static) & event storming (dynamic)
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk | @spoole167 41
www.infoq.com/articles/ddd-contextmapping
ziobrando.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/introducing-event-storming.html

42. Choose (and use) data stores appropriately
• RDBMS
– Valuable for structured data
• Cassandra is Awesome
– but don'T treat it like an RDBMS!
• Don'T build a graph with RDBMS
– Use neo4j, Titan etc
• Beware of operational overhead
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

43. 7. PRIDE - testing in the world of transience
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

44. Previously...
• Local verification
– Consumer-Driven contracts
• End-to-end
– BDD-style critical path
• Remember the test pyramid
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk
martinfowler.com/articles/microservice-testing/

45. Service virtualisation / API simulation
• Virtualise request/response of services
– Unavailable
– Expensive to run
– Fragile/brittle
– Non-deterministic
– Cannot simulate failures
https://dzone.com/articles/continuously-delivering-soa
Andrew Morgan'S talk http://bit.ly/2oV0ecD
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

46. Service virtualisation
• Classics
– CA service virtualization
– Parasoft virtualize
– HPE service virtualization
– IBM Test Virtualization server
• New (open source) kids on the block
– Hoverfly
– Wiremock
– VCR/Betamax
– Mountebank
– mirage
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

47. Hoverfly
• Lightweight Service virtualisation
– Open source (Apache 2.0)
– Go-based / single binary
– Written by @Spectolabs
• Flexible API simulation
– HTTP / HTTPS
– Highly performant
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

48. 27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk
• Middleware
• Remove PII
• Rate limit
• Add headers
• Middleware
• Fault injection
• Chaos monkey

49. Hoverfly-Java (Junit support)
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk
github.com/SpectoLabs/hoverfly-java

50. Right, Let'S Wrap this up...
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

51. The Seven (more) Deadly Sins of Microservices
1. LUST - Using the (Unevaluated) latest and greatest tech…
2. GLUTTONY - Communication Lock-in
3. GREED - What'S Mine is mine (within the organisation)…
4. SLOTH - Getting lazy with NFRs
5. WRATH - Blowing up when bad things happen
6. ENVY - The shared single domain (and data store) fallacy
7. PRIDE - testing in the world of transience
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

52. Bedtime reading
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk

53. THANKS...
http://specto.io
muservicesweekly.com
(Credit to Tareq Abedrabbo, opencredo for inspiration/guidance)
27/04/2017 @danielbryantuk