The Journey to Microservices
Transitioning from a monolith to microservices isn’t just a technical decision—it’s an organizational transformation. In this post, I’ll share the patterns and anti-patterns I’ve encountered while building systems that serve millions of requests per day.
Key Principles
- Service Boundaries: Define clear domain boundaries using Domain-Driven Design principles
- Communication Patterns: Choose synchronous vs asynchronous communication wisely
- Data Management: Each service should own its data, but plan for eventual consistency
- Observability: You can’t fix what you can’t see—instrument everything
Common Pitfalls
One of the biggest mistakes teams make is creating too many microservices too early. Start with a well-structured monolith and extract services as clear boundaries emerge. Premature decomposition leads to distributed monoliths, which are harder to maintain than regular monoliths.
Practical Tips
Use API gateways for client-facing APIs, implement circuit breakers for resilience, and always have a rollback strategy. Your deployment pipeline should support canary deployments and feature flags for safe, incremental rollouts.