The number of microservices running in enterprises increases daily. As a result, service composition, governance, security, and observability are becoming a challenge to implement and incorporate. A “cell-based” architecture is an approach that can be applied to current or desired development and technologies to address these issues. This technology-neutral approach helps cloud-native dev teams become more efficient, act in a more self-organized manner, and speed overall release times. In this talk, Asanka will introduce the “cell-based” reference architecture, which is API-centric, cloud-native and microservices friendly. He will explain the role of APIs in the cell-based approach, as well as examine how real applications are built as cells. Asanka will explore the metrics and approaches that can be used to measure the effectiveness of the architecture and explore how organizations can implement the cell approach.

1. Asanka Abeysinghe
Cell-based Architecture
An Emerging Architecture Pattern for Agile Integration
Deputy CTO & VP of Architecture - CTO Office
WSO2 Inc.

2. Objectives
#1 why: a new pattern
#2 how: created the pattern
#3 what: is Cell-based architecture

3. Motivation

4. Centralized & Layered
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Powerpoint Architects

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Reality of the Enterprise

7. Brownfield > Greenfield
picture credit: https://www.apstra.com/home/landscape-of-meadow-field-with-the-changing-environment-2/
Legacy, monolithic Microservices, sprawl

8. Reference Implementations
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Underutilization of the Technology

10. Gap: architecture | development | deployment
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Dependency management

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Architecture Patterns

13. Timeline

14. Background: Layered Architecture

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A platform with an agile team
100 APIs, 60 message flows, 80 services, n DBs
Multi-tenanted, 3 active tenants
First release after 3 years

16. picture credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/imcountingufoz/
Rise of Microservices

17. Pragmatic Microservices
Netflix: APIs
Uber: Edge Gateway
eBay: API Facade
Gartner: Mini Services

18. Background: Layered Architecture with MSA

19. Background: Segmented Architecture
BS-1 BS-2 BS-n
G-1 G-2
US-1 US-n

20. Platform of Platforms
Platform (shared capabilities)
Project1
Project2
Project3
Projectn
Platform (shared capabilities)
Project1
Project2
Project3
Projectn
Platform (shared capabilities)
Project1
Project2
Project3
Projectn
Platform (shared capabilities)
Project1
Project2
Project3
Projectn
CI/CD
User
Store

21. picture credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ableman/

22. Making of……
picture credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Frank_Schulenburg CC BY 3.0

24. Building the
Concept

25. Business vs technical services
picture credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/arpadlukacs/

26. Service: Technical definition
A code exposes through an
interface that describes a
collection of operations that
are network accessible using
a standardized messaging
protocol.

27. Service: Business definition
Software components that
can be spontaneously
discovered, combined, and
recombined to provide a
solution to a business
problem.

28. Microservice: Technical definition
A microservice must have a
single purpose and be loosely
coupled in design and
deployed independently of
other microservices.
"Micro" is a concept of scope
rather than size.

29. Microservice: Business definition
Microservices is an approach to
application development in
which a large application is built
as a suite of modular
components or services.
These services are built around
business capabilities.

30. Group of (Micro)services

31. The cell is the basic structural,
functional, and
biological unit of all known
living organisms

32. Cell-based Architecture

33. Component: Atomic Units
A component represents a
process or business logic
running in a container,
serverless environment, or an
existing runtime. A component
is designed based on a specific
scope, which can be
independently run and reused
at the runtime.

34. Cell: Units of Enterprise Architecture
A cell is a collection of
components, grouped from
design and implementation
into deployment. A cell is
independently deployable,
manageable, and observable.

35. Cell:Component
1:M
1:1

36. Connected Cells
picture credit: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/

37. Control Plane:
- Signaling of the network
- Makes decisions about the traffic flow
Data Plane:
- Forwards traffic between hops
- Takes data packets
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Management Plane:
- Configure
- Observeabiltty, Monitor

38. Inter and Intra Cell communication
Local-mesh
Global-mesh
DP- data plane
CP- control plane
MP- management plane

39. Connected Cells
Cell gateway (ingress)
Sidecar (egress)
Adaptor (egress)
Ambassador (egress)

40. API-centric Architecture
picture credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/hugh_nelson/

41. API-centric Architecture Pull APIs
- RESTful HTTP, gRPC
Push APIs
- Events JMS, AMQP, SMTP
- Streams Kafka, MQTT

42. Gateway Pattern
picture credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ell-r-brown/

43. Automated Governance (Re)-enables Flow
Policy Store
(Registry)
Observability
(Monitoring/
Analytics)
Policy
Enforcement
(GW)
Automated governance is made
of three things:
A source of truth:
Policy store/registry
Enforcement of the policy
Gateway or plugin attempting to keep
the desired state
Observability
How close to the desired state are we?

44. Security of Cells

45. Developer Experience (DX)
of a Cell

46. Creating Cells
Brand new Cell
Existing (micro)services
Update an existing Cell
Create a new version

48. Lifecycle of a Cell

50. picture credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/rincon_de_lula/

51. Structured Agility
Versioned Components
Versioned Cells
Dependency managed
Autowired
Reusable
Enhanced MSA & CNA

52. Cell-based Enterprise
Architecture

54. Cell Types
Cell Type Components
Logic Microservices, Functions, MicroGateways, lightweight storages
Integration MicroESB or other integration microservices, lightweight storage and/or cache
Legacy Existing systems, legacy services
External SaaS and partner systems
Data RDBMS, NoSQL, File, Message Broker*
Identity IDP, user stores
Channel Web Apps, IoT, mobile apps

55. Reference Implementation L0

57. Reference Implementation L1

59. Human-centric Architecture
picture credit: https://www.vertoanalytics.com/human-vs-data-centric-marketing/

60. Cells and Podular (cellular) Organizations

61. Measure the success
picture credit: https://www.marketingdonut.co.uk/direct-marketing/running-a-direct-mail-campaign/getting-the-measure-of-your-marketing

62. https://www.tasktop.com/blog/5-best-metrics-youve-never-met/
https://dzone.com/articles/reducing-mttr
Mean Time to Repair

63. Self-contained
Deployable as a unit
Independently elastic
Data, control & management plane
Summary: Cell-based Architecture

64. Contribution: walk the talk
picture credit: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/06/microsoft-buying-github

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Just a (steady) start
https://github.com/wso2/reference-architecture

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https://github.com/wso2/reference-methodology
Reference Methodology

67. https://cellery.io/
Build, run, and
manage
code-first
composites
on
Kubernetes

68. Cellery - simple composition and graphical view

69. Cellery - 0.4.0
• Stateful cells
• Composites (naked cells)
◦ Includes Observability, Composite
patch, and Composite advanced
deployments with Blue-Green and
Canary.
• Simpler cell testing (telepresence) and inline
tests
• Enhanced routing based on incoming
headers
• Support for ConfigMaps, and Secrets
• Performance improvements on Cell startup
• Support for Envoy as Cell gateway
• Istio upgrade to 1.2.2
• WSO2 SP as mixer adapter to collect

70. Cellery - in K8s

71. A cloud-native programming language for microservices and APIs
- A compiled, transactional, statically and
strongly typed programming language with
textual and graphical syntaxes.
- Incorporates fundamental concepts of
distributed system integration
- Offers a type safe, concurrent environment
to implement microservices with
distributed transactions, reliable
messaging, stream processing, and
workflows
- Compiles into container images for
deployment on Kubernetes and Docker
https://ballerina.io/

72. Ballerina - code and visual syntax in sync

73. picture credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/infomatique/
Invitation to consume and contribute
https://github.com/wso2/reference-architecture
https://github.com/wso2/reference-methodology
https://ballerina.io
https://cellery.io

75. @asankama
THANK YOU
https://www.linkedin.com/in/asankaabeysinghe/