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Architectureadvanced
Migrating a Monolith to Microservices
A staged playbook for breaking down a monolith without breaking the business - covering bounded contexts, the strangler pattern, and event-driven communication.
180 min7 steps
Technologies Used
Node.jsPostgreSQLKafkaKubernetesOpenTelemetry
Implementation
Step by Step Guide
Follow these steps to implement this pattern in your project
1
Audit the Monolith
Map domains, hot spots, and team ownership.
2
Identify Bounded Contexts
Use domain-driven design to find natural seams.
3
Stand Up a Strangler Layer
Route specific traffic through a façade so you can swap implementations.
4
Extract the First Service
Pick a low-risk domain and extract behind a stable API.
5
Adopt Event-Driven Comms
Use the event-driven systems playbook for async integration.
6
Observability First
Distributed tracing and logging across services - see monitoring.
7
Decommission the Monolith
Gradually retire pieces - never a single big-bang flip.
Results
What You'll Achieve
Expected outcomes from implementing this playbook
Independently deployable services
Reduced blast radius for changes
Improved team autonomy
Better scaling characteristics
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