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"Microservices without the Servers: the Uberization of IaaS as PaaS for SaaS" Like when you say you have no carbon footprint because you don't own a car, even

by seiji 11y ago

"Microservices without the Servers: the Uberization of IaaS as PaaS for SaaS" Like when you say you have no carbon footprint because you don't own a car, even though you call a taxi every time you want to go somewhere? Are microservices different from SOA? Or is it just a more modern, streamlined buzzword? You say "microservices," but all I see is "omg, you realize inter-node latency isn't a trivial component to ignore when building interactive services, right?"

aikah 11y ago
> Or is it just a more modern, streamlined buzzword? You'd be surprised how many people taking the "micro service" bait have never heard of an n-tier architecture or even SOA. I pity the next generation of developers that will have to maintain all that micro-servicing mess developed today. Instead of relying on a simple architecture with messaging and workers, micro-service evangelists are turning maintenance and deployment of applications into a nightmare for the sake of being hip. I won't even talk about amazon lambda which is the "acme" of vendor lock in .
hyperpallium 11y ago
Yes, microservices are just a rebranding of a SOA subset. http://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html#MicroservicesAndSoa http://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html#Microser... But I think this direction is inevitable, and we'll soon see freemium microservices. Amazon's "Lambda" page (esp scroll down to the "benefits" https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/ https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/ ) shows it's more like offloading some tasks (like worker threads in the cloud). I had a play with the second (linked) app, SquirrelBin http://squirrelbin.com/ http://squirrelbin.com/ which can edit and run javascript snippets. The latency is awful, 2-3 seconds for me (I'm in Australia, but that should only add 200ms roundtrip or so). They seem to spin up (reuse?) an entire instance for each request - it's incredible that it's as fast as it is. But the problem is the architecture of this specific app: the delay would be fine if you could edit-run-loop code locally, without the cloud. But they wanted to demonstrate quick development (for them) by just making a CRUD app, using AWS Lambda existing http endpoints for PUT, POST, GET, DEL. So after editing you have to save, load and run - and each one interacts with the cloud. BTW the article about SquirrelBin https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/the-squirrelbin-architecture-a-serverless-microservice-using-aws-lambda/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/the-squirrelbin-archite...
- seiji 11y ago
  They seem to spin up (reuse?) an entire instance for each request There are some clever platforms running on bare Xen (no direct OS) that can spin up an entire instance and destroy it on every request pretty quickly. http://erlangonxen.org http://erlangonxen.org is a great example. 100ms to boot your entire "system" for production usage.
ternaryoperator 11y ago
The biggest difference I see when compared with SOA is that microservices uses a dumb-pipe model, whereas SOA's use of an ESB pushed it to a smart-pipe model, which, was much more complicated overall to set up, manage, scale.

by seiji 11y ago

aikah 11y ago

> Or is it just a more modern, streamlined buzzword? You'd be surprised how many people taking the "micro service" bait have never heard of an n-tier architecture or even SOA. I pity the next generation of developers that will have to maintain all that micro-servicing mess developed today. Instead of relying on a simple architecture with messaging and workers, micro-service evangelists are turning maintenance and deployment of applications into a nightmare for the sake of being hip. I won't even talk about amazon lambda which is the "acme" of vendor lock in .

hyperpallium 11y ago

Yes, microservices are just a rebranding of a SOA subset. http://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html#MicroservicesAndSoa http://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html#Microser... But I think this direction is inevitable, and we'll soon see freemium microservices. Amazon's "Lambda" page (esp scroll down to the "benefits" https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/ https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/ ) shows it's more like offloading some tasks (like worker threads in the cloud). I had a play with the second (linked) app, SquirrelBin http://squirrelbin.com/ http://squirrelbin.com/ which can edit and run javascript snippets. The latency is awful, 2-3 seconds for me (I'm in Australia, but that should only add 200ms roundtrip or so). They seem to spin up (reuse?) an entire instance for each request - it's incredible that it's as fast as it is. But the problem is the architecture of this specific app: the delay would be fine if you could edit-run-loop code locally, without the cloud. But they wanted to demonstrate quick development (for them) by just making a CRUD app, using AWS Lambda existing http endpoints for PUT, POST, GET, DEL. So after editing you have to save, load and run - and each one interacts with the cloud. BTW the article about SquirrelBin https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/the-squirrelbin-architecture-a-serverless-microservice-using-aws-lambda/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/the-squirrelbin-archite...

seiji 11y ago
They seem to spin up (reuse?) an entire instance for each request There are some clever platforms running on bare Xen (no direct OS) that can spin up an entire instance and destroy it on every request pretty quickly. http://erlangonxen.org http://erlangonxen.org is a great example. 100ms to boot your entire "system" for production usage.

ternaryoperator 11y ago

The biggest difference I see when compared with SOA is that microservices uses a dumb-pipe model, whereas SOA's use of an ESB pushed it to a smart-pipe model, which, was much more complicated overall to set up, manage, scale.