Skip to main content

Part 1 - Overengineering of a cloud application

By
N-tier architecture is seen nowadays as an old. People tends to migrate to event-base or microservice architecture. It's very common to see people that decide an architecture based on the market trends, ignoring the requirements, business needs and budget.

When you combine this with Azure (cloud in general) you will end up easily with a microservice architecture that combines messaging systems and event-driven architectures. Of course, N-tier application has a lot of disadvantages, but when you have a simple web application, there is no sense to create a complex unicorn that will survive for 100 years.

I was shocked to review a solution that was deployed in Azure 2 months ago, that from architures point of view was beautiful, but from the running and development costs become a nightmare.
I will not go in details of the business requirements, but imagine a system that needs to display some static information, allow users to upload small CSV files that are consolidated in a reporting system. Figures:

  • Under 200 users worldwide
  • Concurrency level is 10% (20 users online simultan)
  • Less than 15 CSV uploaded in total per day
  • Basic reporting functionality
  • Current DB size 150MB (2M reporting entries)
  • DB forecast for next 3 years is 1GB (20-25M reporting entries)
  • CSV has up to 1000 entries (maximum 10 columns)
For a system like this, it was a delight to discover a microservice solution in the backed hosted on a dedicated cluster that communicates between each other using Azure Service Bus. The front-end was a SPA with a nice REST API. Behind this, there was an Hadoop Cluster that would process the CSV files, extracting points for charts, pushing the results in a DocumentDB. User management was done using a system hosted in Azure SQL Database. 
There were also some other system involved, but this are the main components.

I don't know what is you opinion about this kind of system. Personally I like how it was design, it's extremely scalable and can process and manage high loads. In the same time, I take a look on the requirements and I ask myself 'WHY?!'.

My main goal was to reduce running costs and complexity of the project with a minimal impact. If you want to find out what was our proposed solution you should check the blog tomorrow.

Part 2 - The solution
Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousJune 12, 2017 at 11:50 AM

    I was interested to hear about your proposed solution but cannot find it on this blog

    ReplyDelete
  2. tudor_turcuJune 12, 2017 at 1:21 PM

    wow.. All this should fit easily on a single server, not even a large one.. :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Database Modernization Matters for AI

By
  When companies transition to the cloud, they typically begin with applications and virtual machines, which is often the easier part of the process. The actual complexity arises later when databases are moved. To save time and effort, cloud adoption is more of a cloud migration in an IaaS manner, fulfilling current, but not future needs. Even organisations that are already in the cloud find that their databases, although “migrated,” are not genuinely modernised. This disparity becomes particularly evident when they begin to explore AI technologies. Understanding Modernisation Beyond Migration Database modernisation is distinct from merely relocating an outdated database to Azure. It's about making your data layer ready for future needs, like automation, real-time analytics, and AI capabilities. AI needs high throughput, which can be achieved using native DB cloud capabilities. When your database runs in a traditional setup (even hosted in the cloud), in that case, you will enc...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cloud Myths: Migrating to the cloud is quick and easy (Pill 2 of 5 / Cloud Pills)

By
The idea that migration to the cloud is simple, straightforward and rapid is a wrong assumption. It’s a common misconception of business stakeholders that generates delays, budget overruns and technical dept. A migration requires laborious planning, technical expertise and a rigorous process.  Migrations, especially cloud migrations, are not one-size-fits-all journeys. One of the most critical steps is under evaluation, under budget and under consideration. The evaluation phase, where existing infrastructure, applications, database, network and the end-to-end estate are evaluated and mapped to a cloud strategy, is crucial to ensure the success of cloud migration. Additional factors such as security, compliance, and system dependencies increase the complexity of cloud migration.  A misconception regarding lift-and-shits is that they are fast and cheap. Moving applications to the cloud without changes does not provide the capability to optimise costs and performance, leading to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cloud Myths: Cloud is Cheaper (Pill 1 of 5 / Cloud Pills)

By
Cloud Myths: Cloud is Cheaper (Pill 1 of 5 / Cloud Pills) The idea that moving to the cloud reduces the costs is a common misconception. The cloud infrastructure provides flexibility, scalability, and better CAPEX, but it does not guarantee lower costs without proper optimisation and management of the cloud services and infrastructure. Idle and unused resources, overprovisioning, oversize databases, and unnecessary data transfer can increase running costs. The regional pricing mode, multi-cloud complexity, and cost variety add extra complexity to the cost function. Cloud adoption without a cost governance strategy can result in unexpected expenses. Improper usage, combined with a pay-as-you-go model, can result in a nightmare for business stakeholders who cannot track and manage the monthly costs. Cloud-native services such as AI services, managed databases, and analytics platforms are powerful, provide out-of-the-shelve capabilities, and increase business agility and innovation. H...
Post a Comment
Read more