How to survive your migration to Microservices? LeanIX Co-CEO André Christ shared insights and learnings at the WeAreDevelopers Conference in Vienna 2018. LeanIX just completed its transition from a classical, monolithic application in LAMP stack to a state-of-the-art Microservices application based on REST-APIs, GraphQL.

1. How to survive a
Microservices Migration
André Christ
Co-CEO LeanIX

2. 2
About me

3. 50
Employees
> 120
Customers
2012
Founded
2
Offices
> 100%
Y-o-Y Growth

4. Software-as-a-Service for Enterprise Architecture
4

5. 5

6. Our Journey to (Micro)-Services from 2015 - 2017
6
2 Developers 15 Developers
Fixed Data Model Flexible Data Model
MVC API First + SPA
10 Customers 120 Customers
MVP Enterprise Ready

7. 7
What was essential?
How did we build it?
What did we learn?

8. Establish foundation in knowledge & processes
8
2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Build MVP & Grow (LAMP) Maintain
1st (Micro-) Services
“Pathfinder”
Migrate
v 3.x
v 4.x
2 2 3 15 20 43
Team
Size
2018
50
Scrum

9. Create a Mission for the entire company!
9

10. Self-service staging environment for every version
10
/beta
Version 3 Version 4 - “Pathfinder”

11. Hypercare Mode: Switch from SCRUM to KANBAN
11
• ”War”-Room
• Every morning:
60 min Session
Dev-Leads &
Migration-Team
• For ~ 6 months:
KANBAN

12. Celebrate success – it is a tough journey!
12

13. 13
What was essential?
How did we build it?
What did we learn?

14. 14
View
Controller
Model
LeanIX 2012 - 2014 LeanIX 2015 - 2017
Single Page App
REST-
API
REST-
API
REST-
API
REST-
API
REST-
API
REST-
API
Pathfinder MTM Survey Metrics Export Webhooks
REST-
API
Images
We have completed our transition

15. 15
All REST-APIs have Swagger, secured via oAuth2 based on JWT
JWT-Token (jwt.io)

16. 16
/applications /capabilities
GET GET
Display interactive reports very fast Many requests & unnecessary network load
REST-APIs are great – but have performance limits

17. 17
query
{
allBusinessCapabilities {
factSheets {
id
displayName
relToChild {factSheet{id}}
}
}
allApplications {
factSheets {
id
displayName
relToChild {factSheet{id}}
relApplToBusCapability {factSheet{id}}
}
}
}
• JSON-based query language to
request required data
• Graph-based access to data
• Strongly typed API for each
LeanIX workspace (full multi-
tenancy)
Example: One request to build report
Solution: Facebook’s GraphQL – “SQL” for APIs

18. 18
Load-Balancer (default = blue)
Svc A
1.0
Svc B
1.0
Svc C
1.0
DB, Index, Queue DB, Elastic
Green-Blue Deployment to quickly release functionality

19. Containers with new version are started
19
Load-Balancer (default = blue)
Svc A
1.0
Svc A
1.1
Svc B
1.0
Svc C
1.0
DB, Index, Queue DB, Elastic
Svc B
1.1
Svc C
1.1

20. 20
Load-Balancer (default = BLUE)
Svc A
1.0
Svc A
1.1
Svc B
1.0
Svc C
1.0
DB, Index, Queue DB, Elastic
Test
Svc B
1.1
Svc C
1.1
Special users / Testers can access them in production

21. 21
Load-Balancer (default = GREEN)
Svc A
1.0
Svc A
1.1
Svc B
1.0
Svc C
1.0
DB, Index, Queue DB, Elastic
Svc B
1.1
Svc C
1.1
Load-Balancer switches to new versions

22. Full-schema rebuild without downtime
22
v42,
in_use
Index
Info A
(global) workspace y
Business
data
workspace x
Business
data
V43,
not_in
_use
Index
Info B
(global)
Schema v43,
rebuilding
(blue)
Schema v42,
active
(green)
Side A Side B

23. Operations monitoring toolchain
23
InstanceInstanceInstances
GET /healthcheck
Servers
CPU / Mem / Errors
Logfiles
Incidents
Incidents
DISABLED
#status
OCE on duty
status.leanix.net
Escalation
InstanceShared
Services
Servers
CPU / Mem / Errors
Logfiles DISABLED
Incidents
GET /healthcheck Incidents
CS classifies
as EC-1
EC-1
Bugs
Engineering
via Zendesk Tab
support@leanix.net
Incident auto-generated
Incident manual
Engineering
Customer Success

24. 24
What was essential?
How did we build it?
What did we learn?

25. You are not Netflix – Find your definition
25
# Developers > # of Services
API first
Swagger Docs
One Function Concern
Containerized
No shared DBs Config via Env*
*See The 12-Factor App

26. Good Application Performance Monitoring (APM) is crucial
26

27. Establish Team Ownership earlier
27
pfapi
opportunity
postgres kafka elastic arango
pfweb
admin
auth
self-
service mtm webhooks images
ex-
port
integrations poll metrics
postgreskafka influxdbpostgres
elastic
postgres files
synclog
postgres
idp
postfix
rabbitmq
elastic
Tornado
Neuro
resource
Teams white only
transaction
factsheet
postgres
postgres
workspace
user
instance
…
subscription
delivery
event
event
event
…
event factsheet
…
factsheet
metrics
poll result
poll
…
event
workspace
KPIs
…
avatarsTechno-
pedia
syncs
sync items
jobs
configs
Data Object
svc.leanix.net
app.leanix.net
Operations
• etcd
• nginx
• deploy
Flow
todos inventory reporting
Invent
home
inventory
reporting
admin
admin
survey
metrics
integration
n/a
iPhone App

28. Deployment is the new Monolith!
28
Automate, Automate, Automate

29. Eat your own dogfood! – Automatic Documentation
29
Source-Code Repository
Source code
Build Info
YAML-Metadata file
Continuous
Integration (CI)
Pivio
Client
Inventory
1
1 Dependencies from build system, e.g. uses Hibernate3, Java8, etc.
2 Automatically triggered, when a new release is created
3 Updates Information in Inventory
2 3

30. … based on open-source description format Pivio
30
• Developer-friendly
„YAML“ format
• Open-Source Client
and Server: pivio.io
• Extracts Dependencies
from Java & Javascript
Projects
• Easily extensible for
more build-systems

31. Don’t forget the fun - Carnival is big in Bonn ;-)
31
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WE ARE
HIRING!

32. Thank you!
@christ_andre | www.leanix.net | Booth @ WeAreDevs