Microservices, containers, serverless - these industry buzzwords are hot right now. Breaking down monolithic applications and architectures is a central theme across industries as organizations move to adopt new technologies and take advantage of the AWS cloud to scale, while rapidly innovating to meet changing customer expectations and competitive challenges. In this session, we'll take a closer look at what is actually required to "break down the monolith" and provide some strategies and design patterns for building microservices on AWS.

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Breaking Down the Monowhat?
Lessons from Amazon’s journey
Durga Prasad Kakaraparthi
Solutions Architecture
Amazon Internet Services

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Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Buddha_statue_in_hussain_sagar.jpg

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The Monolith
“…a single-tiered software application in which the user
interface and data access code are combined into a single
program from a single platform. A monolithic application is
self-contained, and independent from other computing
applications.”
- Wikipedia

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8. Okay, let’s start from the beginning…

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First let’s discuss Software Monoliths,
A traditional approach to software design.

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Break warehouse processes into few big blocks
INBOUND
OUTBOUND

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Warehouse Process Blocks
INBOUND
• Track products traveling to the warehouse
• Receive products
• Prepare products to be stored
• Store products
• Handle inbound defects
• …
OUTBOUND
• Pick customer orders
• Prepare shipments
• Track shipments
• Handle outbound defects
• …

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Set up Software Teams
INBOUND
• Track products traveling to the warehouse
• Receive products
• Prepare products to be stored
• Store products in the warehouse
• Handle inbound defects
• …
OUTBOUND
• Pick customer orders
• Prepare shipments
• Track shipments
• Report defects
• Handle outbound defects
• …
Inbound Software Team Outbound Software Team

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Software Teams & Dependencies
Inbound Software Team
50+ developers
Shared libraries
Outbound Software Team
50+ developers
Inbound Software Monolith Outbound Software Monolith

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High Software Coupling!
Inbound Software Outbound SoftwareShared libraries
• Teams depend on each other’s libraries + other common libraries
• “We’re blocked as we cannot build our software until you hand us the latest version of your library”
• Teams depend on each other’s database schema
• “We’re afraid the changes we’re making to our database schema will break your code”

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Long Build/Test/Release Cycles
Inbound Software Team
Outbound Software Team
Build Test Release
Build Test Release
• “I’m constantly having to resolve commit conflicts and merges. This is taking too much of my time!”
• “Our last build attempt failed after 4 hours. We don’t know who broke the build as 30 commits were made”
Massive builds
Long time to
run tests
Ever growing
release binaries

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Problems With Monolith Software
System operation is a nightmare
(module X is failing, who’s the owner?)
Lack of agility
(very long time to add new features)
Lack of innovation
(team always busy fixing inefficiencies)
Long Build/Test/Release Cycles
(who broke the build?)
Software architecture is hard to maintain and evolveScalability is compromised
(vertical scalability)
Slow development pace
(developers busy fixing issues)
Customers frustrated
(new releases take months)

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Use Micro-services!

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The Anatomy of a Micro-service
Micro-service = Service-oriented architecture + “small” public API
Micro-service
Software Modules
(application, libraries, etc)
Data Store
(eg, DynamoDB, RDS,
Cache, S3)
Public API
addProductDetails(ProductId id, ProductDetails details)
removeProductDetails(ProductId id)
getProductDetails(ProductId id) : ProductDetails

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Back to the Amazon Warehouse
A micro-services approach will require us to break down
processes way further…
INBOUND
• Track products traveling to the warehouse
• Receive products
• Prepare products to be stored
• Store products
• Handle inbound defects
• …
OUTBOUND
• Pick customer orders
• Prepare shipments
• Track shipments
• Report defects
• Handle outbound defects
• …
Handle outbound defectsTrack products traveling to the warehouse
Receive products Prepare products to be stored
Store products
Handle inbound defects
Pick customer orders
Prepare shipments
Report defectsTrack shipments
Smaller Teams = Finer-grained Software = Micro-services

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Micro-services Can Be Built By Small Development
Teams
2-pizza Amazon Development Teams
“Pick customer orders” Team
2-pizza team
(typically 4-8 people)
Micro-service
Warehouse employee using
micro-service via web interface

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Micro-services Only Rely on Each Other’s Public API
Micro-service Micro-service
public API public API

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Web of Micro-services
Store products in the warehouse
Pick products for customers Report defects
Track shipments
Product Details

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AWS is a great platform for micro-services…
… and that’s where Amazon micro-services reside

24. Important Considerations about
Micro-services from Amazon’s Experience

25. Principle 1
Micro-services only
rely on each other’s
public API
“Contracts” by NobMouse. No alterations other than cropping.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nobmouse/4052848608/
Image used with permissions under Creative Commons license 2.0, Attribution
Generic License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)

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Micro-services Considerations
Hide your data
Hey Sally, can
we read data
from your micro-
service’s
database?
Sorry Paul, in a micro-services
architecture you should only
rely on our exposed public
APIs. We might redesign our
data model in the future and
we don’t want to break your
code.
Nope!
Yep!

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Micro-services Considerations
Evolve Public API in a Backward-compatible Fashion
storeProduct (ProductId id, LocationId id )
storeProduct (ProductId id, LocationId id )
storePallet(PalletId id, LocationId id)
storeProduct (ProductId id, LocationId id )
storePallet(PalletId id, LocationId id)
storeProduct(ProductId id, LocationId id, int
numberOfUnits)
storeProduct (ProductId id, LocationId id )
storePallet(PalletId id, LocationId id)
storeProduct(ProductId id, LocationId id, int numberOfUnits)
Version 1.0
Version 1.1
Version 1.2
Version 1.3
Public API created and released
A new API to store pallets is released
A new API to store products is released
Old API still available
Old API to store products is deprecated
so old clients can still call it but
no new clients are accepted for that API
The public API is a contract between your micro-services and its clients and once
released will have to be maintained for as long as clients rely on it.

28. Principle 2
Use the right tool for the
job
“Tools #2” by Juan Pablo Olmo. No alterations other than cropping.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/juanpol/1562101472/
Image used with permissions under Creative Commons license 2.0, Attribution
Generic License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)

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Principle 2: Use the right tool for the job
(Embrace polyglot persistence)
Micro-service A Micro-service B
public API public API
DynamoDB

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Principle 2: Use the right tool for the job
(Embrace polyglot persistence)
Micro-service A Micro-service B
public API public API
DynamoDB
Amazon
Elasticsearch
Service

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Principle 2: Use the right tool for the job
(Embrace polyglot persistence)
Micro-service A Micro-service B
public API public API
Amazon
Elasticsearch
Service
RDS
Aurora

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Principle 2: Use the right tool for the job
(Embrace polyglot programming frameworks)
Micro-service A Micro-service B
public API public API
Amazon
Elasticsearch
Service
RDS
Aurora

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Principle 2: Use the right tool for the job
(Embrace polyglot programming frameworks)
Micro-service A Micro-service B
public API public API
Amazon
Elasticsearch
Service
RDS
Aurora

34. Principle 3
Secure Your Services
“security” by Dave Bleasdale. No alterations other than cropping.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/sidelong/3878741556/
Image used with permissions under Creative Commons license 2.0,
Attribution Generic License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)

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Micro-services Considerations
Secure Your Service: authentication, authorization
• Authentication
(identify of the client is verified)
•
Authorization
(client is given permission for a limited scope of actions)
Eg, AAA protocols

36. Principle 4
Be a good citizen
within the ecosystem
“Lamington National Park, rainforest” by Jussarian. No alterations other than
cropping.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/kerr_at_large/87771074/
Image used with permissions under Creative Commons license 2.0,

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Micro-services Considerations
Scale the service as needed
Product Details
15 TPS
100 TPS
5 TPS
20 TPS
Before we let you call
our micro-service we
need to understand
your use case,
expected load (TPS)
and accepted latency

38. Principle 5
More than just
technology
transformation
“rowing on the river in Bedford” by Matthew Hunt. No alterations other than
cropping.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattphotos/19189529/
Image used with permissions under Creative Commons license 2.0,
Attribution Generic License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)

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Two-pizza teams
Full ownership
Full accountability
Aligned incentives
DevOps
“You build it, you run it”

40. Principle 6
Automate Everything
“Robot” by Robin Zebrowski. No alterations other than cropping.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/firepile/438134733/
Image used with permissions under Creative Commons license 2.0,
Attribution Generic License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)

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Principle 6: Automate everything
AWS CodeCommit AWS
CodePipeline
AWS CodeDeploy
ELB
Auto
ScalingEC2 Lambda
ECS
DynamoDBRDS ElastiCache
SQS SWF SESSNS
API GatewayCloudWatch Cloud Trail
Kinesis
Elastic
Beanstalk

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releasetestbuild
Focused agile teams
2-pizza team delivery pipeline service

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releasetestbuild
releasetestbuild
Focused agile teams
2-pizza team delivery pipeline service2-pizza team delivery pipeline service2-pizza team delivery pipeline

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releasetestbuild
releasetestbuild
Focused agile teams
2-pizza team delivery pipeline service
releasetestbuild

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releasetestbuild
releasetestbuild
Focused agile teams
2-pizza team delivery pipeline service
releasetestbuild
releasetestbuild

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releasetestbuild
releasetestbuild
Focused agile teams
2-pizza team delivery pipeline service
releasetestbuild
releasetestbuild
releasetestbuild

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releasetestbuild
releasetestbuild
Focused agile teams
2-pizza team delivery pipeline service
releasetestbuild
releasetestbuild
releasetestbuild
releasetestbuild

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Benefits of Micro-services for Amazon
System operation is simple
(developers can be on-call )
Agility
(new features added quickly)
Innovation as its best
(team has time to think big)
Short Build/Test/Release Cycles
(fix problems soon)
Software architecture is easier to maintain and evolve
Scalable Software
(horizontal scalability)
Fast development pace
(developers fully focused on writing code) Customers Excited
(new software releases every day!)

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> 60 million deployments a year*
× Microservice architecture
× Continuous delivery
× Multiple environments
*2016
number
Thousands of teams
*2016 number
Benefits of Micro-services
for Amazon

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Getting Started Resource Center
https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/projects/break-monolith-app-microservices-ecs-docker-ec2/
Microservices on AWS Whitepaper:
https://d1.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/microservices-on-aws.pdf

51. Thank you!