Last updated on Sep 25, 2024

How do you migrate from a monolithic architecture to a microservices architecture?

If you are a software developer or architect, you may have heard of the terms microservices and monolithic architectures. These are two different ways of designing and building software applications, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. In this article, we will explain what these architectures are, how they differ, and how you can migrate from a monolithic architecture to a microservices architecture.

1 What is a monolithic architecture?

A monolithic architecture is a software design pattern where all the components of an application are tightly coupled and run as a single unit. For example, a web application may consist of a user interface, a business logic layer, a data access layer, and a database, all deployed on the same server. This makes the application easy to develop, test, and deploy, as well as simple to scale by adding more servers.

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Nadeem Malik

Enterprise Architect - providing enterprise-wide insights, promoting standardization, reducing costs, mitigating risk, increasing agility, realizing strategies, and driving innovation.
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A monolithic architecture is like a big, cozy house where everything's under one roof. It's a single, tightly-coupled unit that's easy to build & maintain initially. But as it grows, it can become a bit unwieldy - imagine trying to repaint just one room when the whole house is connected! While it's simple to scale horizontally, it lacks the flexibility of more modern approaches. Still, for smaller apps or teams, it can be a solid choice.

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2 What is a microservices architecture?

A microservices architecture is a software design pattern where an application is composed of multiple independent and loosely coupled services, each performing a specific function. For example, a web application may consist of several services, such as a user service, an order service, a payment service, and a notification service, each deployed on a separate server or container. This makes the application more flexible, resilient, and scalable, as well as easier to update and maintain.

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Nadeem Malik

Enterprise Architect - providing enterprise-wide insights, promoting standardization, reducing costs, mitigating risk, increasing agility, realizing strategies, and driving innovation.
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Think of microservices as a neighborhood of tiny houses, each with its own purpose. These independent services communicate via well-defined interfaces, like neighbors chatting over the fence. This approach offers flexibility & scalability, but it's not without challenges. It's like managing a homeowners' association - coordination can be tricky! The key is finding the right balance between independence & cohesion. Remember, not every app needs to be a sprawling suburb!

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3 What are the benefits of microservices?

Microservices offer several advantages over monolithic architectures, such as faster development and deployment, higher availability and fault tolerance, improved scalability and efficiency, and greater modularity and maintainability. With microservices, each service can be developed, tested, and deployed independently without affecting the application. Additionally, services can be replicated and distributed across different servers or regions to ensure high availability and performance. Furthermore, services can be scaled up or down according to demand and resource usage, optimizing hardware and cloud resource utilization while reducing hosting and maintenance costs. Lastly, each service can be designed using different technologies, frameworks, and languages to best fit its functionality while allowing for easier replacement, upgrade, and reuse of services.

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Nadeem Malik

Enterprise Architect - providing enterprise-wide insights, promoting standardization, reducing costs, mitigating risk, increasing agility, realizing strategies, and driving innovation.
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Microservices are like LEGO blocks for your enterprise - mix, match, and build as needed! They offer faster development cycles, improved fault isolation (one wobbly block won't topple the whole structure), and the ability to scale specific services on demand. It's like having a swiss army knife instead of a single tool - you've got options! But don't get carried away - sometimes a simple hammer is all you need. The real magic happens when you align these benefits with your business goals.

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4 What are the challenges of microservices?

Microservices come with some challenges and trade-offs compared to monolithic architectures, such as increased complexity and coordination. Each service requires its own configuration, deployment, monitoring, and communication mechanisms, as well as coordination and collaboration with other services. Data consistency and integrity can be difficult to maintain when each service has its own data store or database. Additionally, security and governance must be taken into consideration because of the increased risk of unauthorized access or malicious attacks. Each service must implement authentication, authorization, encryption, and logging mechanisms that comply with relevant regulations and policies.

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5 How to migrate from monolithic to microservices?

Migrating from a monolithic architecture to a microservices architecture is a complex process that requires careful planning and execution. To get started, you should analyze your application and identify the core business domains and boundaries to separate into independent services. Define the contracts and interfaces that each service will expose and consume, such as APIs, data formats, protocols, and standards. Extract one or a few services from your monolithic application to test in isolation and integration with the rest of the application. Gradually extract more services until you have fully decomposed your monolithic application into microservices. Finally, refactor and optimize the services according to their specific needs and characteristics, such as choosing the best technology stack, database, security measures, monitoring mechanisms, and scaling strategies.

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Mohammed Abrar

Technology Architect - Presales & Delivery | Smart Metering | IoT | Edge Computing
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While migrating from monolithic apps, we would first need to focus on segregating or splitting responsibilities similar to a three-tiered architecture and then further broken down into modules that function and scaled independently, based on business use cases and technical domains. These modules can be backend microservices and micro frontends. An overall architecture base is then created for consistency and inter service communications. This arch base will help us in achieving velocity and to reduce friction while allowing room for future improvements or changes.

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6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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How do you migrate from a monolithic architecture to a microservices architecture?

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1 What is a monolithic architecture?

2 What is a microservices architecture?

3 What are the benefits of microservices?

4 What are the challenges of microservices?

5 How to migrate from monolithic to microservices?

6 Here’s what else to consider

Technical Architecture

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