Microservices

on

Azure

The good, the bad and the ugly

Who am I?

Piotr Stapp

Unique name - just sing a song: "Don't Stapp me know" ;)
CEO @ Dotnetomaniak
VP @ devWarsztaty
ex - Senior software/DevOps/Architect @mBank/@FinAi/@Allegro
Software Architect @ Demant Technology Center
M.Sc (distction) Oxford Brooks University in Web Tech
M.Sc. Warsaw University of Technology in Computer Science
And ......

https://www.linkedin.com/in/piotrstapp/

What about microservices experience?

mBank - a lot of (micro)services
FinAi - 100% microservices on Azure
Allegro - again 100% microservies on Azure
Demant - I'm here 2 weeks only, so ....

The app

Microservices

Shiny UI in Angular/React/Vue
REST / gRPC
MongoDB/Cassandra/SQL?
RabbitMQ/Kafka
Kubernetes/Hosting

Microservices

Shiny UI in Angular/React/Vue
REST / gRPC
RabbitMQ/Kafka
MongoDB/Cassandra/SQL?
Hosting/Kubernetes
API Gateway!

https://smilr.benco.io/

Database

Options (built-in)

SQL
- Azure SQL
- Azure Database for PostgreSQL
- Azure Database for MySQL
- Azure Database for MariaDB
NoSQL
- Azure Cosmos DB
- Azure Cache for Redis
- Table storage (simple key value)
Self-hosted on VM

Where is MongoDB or Cassandra?

Azure Cosmos DB

Using

Azure CLI

- Creating is easy :)

- 5-15 minutes :(

- I will cheat a bit




az cosmosdb create \
   --name $COSMOS_DB_NAME \
   --resource-group $group \
   --kind MongoDB

Making it cheap

Use Free Tier when possible :)
Use shared throughput on database level
Think about indexes:
- default is the strings with hash, numbers by value
- up to the third level
Apply dynamic scaling - manual or automatic :)
It offers 99.999% SLA for both read and write availability
Use calculator to plan proper RU before start https://cosmos.azure.com/capacitycalculator/

Funny error

var query = _dbClient.Where<UserDocument>( _collectionUri,
 d =>d.User.Email.ToLower() == criteria.SearchString);

SELECT * FROM c
WHERE LOWER(c.User.Email) = "{search}" 

------------------------------

var query = _dbClient.Where<UserDocument>( _collectionUri,
 d => d.User.Email.Equals(originalSearchString,
 		StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)); 

SELECT * FROM c
WHERE STRINGEQUALS(c.User.Email, "{search}", true)

Build our app

Options

CI/CD
- GitHub
- Azure DevOps
- Any other :)
Fast and semi-CI/CD
- Azure Container Instances for Docker
Manual
- Your own machine

Container registry

Public
- docker hub
- ...
Private:
- any
- Azure Container Registry
- ...

Create Azure Container Registry

with Azure CLI



az acr create \
  -n $ACR_NAME \
  -g $group -l westeurope \
  --sku Standard \
  --admin-enabled true

Build an App

with Azure CLI



# build data-api
az acr build \
  --registry $ACR_NAME \
  -g $group \
  --file node/data-api/Dockerfile \
  --image smilr/data-api $GIT_URL

# build frontend
az acr build \
  --registry $ACR_NAME \
  -g $group \
  --file node/frontend/Dockerfile \
  --image smilr/frontend $GIT_URL

# get logs
az acr task logs \
  --registry $ACR_NAME \
  -g $group

Hosting simple

Azure Web App

.NET, Java, Node.js, PHP, and Python on Windows
.NET Core, Node.js, PHP or Ruby on Linux
Docker on Linux

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/

App Plan

Something to host apps :)



az appservice plan create \
   -n appPlan \
   -g $group \
   --sku B1 --is-linux

Prepare deployment

To deploy demo app we need:

- Cosmos (Mongo) connection string

- Azure Container Registry Credentials

export COSMOS_CONN_STR=$(az cosmosdb keys list \
  -n $COSMOS_DB_NAME -g $group \
  --type connection-strings \
  --query 'connectionStrings[0].connectionString' -o tsv)

DOCKER_PASS=$(az acr credential show -n $ACR_NAME -g $group \
                     --query 'passwords[0].value' -o tsv)
DOCKER_USER=$(az acr credential show -n $ACR_NAME -g $group \
                     --query 'username' -o tsv)

Deploy

data-api

with CLI



# Create
az webapp create --plan appPlan \
   -n $APP_DATA -g $group \
   --deployment-container-image-name \
     $ACR_NAME.azurecr.io/smilr/data-api \
   --docker-registry-server-user \
     $DOCKER_USER \
   --docker-registry-server-password \
     $DOCKER_PASS


# Database connection
az webapp config appsettings set \
   -g $group -n $APP_DATA \
   --settings \
     MONGO_CONNSTR=$COSMOS_CONN_STR

# curl
curl $APP_DATA.azurewebsites.net

Deploy frontend

# Create     
az webapp create --plan appPlan -n $APP_FRONT -g $group \
   --deployment-container-image-name \
     $ACR_NAME.azurecr.io/smilr/frontend \
   --docker-registry-server-user $DOCKER_USER \
   --docker-registry-server-password $DOCKER_PASS

# App settings
az webapp config appsettings set -g $group -n $APP_FRONT \
   --settings \
   API_ENDPOINT=https://$APP_DATA.azurewebsites.net/api

# browser
curl https://$APP_FRONT.azurewebsites.net

Sum up

We can host multiple apps on one app plan
App plan shares CPU and RAM across all running instances.
Putting it in private VLAN is very expensive - it is called Application Service Environment
You don't have to think about security updates and patches.
Scaling up&down is rather minutes not seconds.
It supports Windows hosting without virtual machine.

Hosting advanced

Azure Kubernetes Service

Create

with Azure CLI

- 10-15 minutes

- machine size is important



az aks create \
  -g $group -n $AKS_NAME \
  --node-vm-size Standard_DS2_v2 \
  --node-count 2 \
  --generate-ssh-keys
  

# Attach ACR
az aks update \
   -n $AKS_NAME \
   -g $group \
   --attach-acr $ACR_NAME

Get kubectl credentials

- use it as any other Kubernetes cluster



# Get kubectl credentials 
az aks get-credentials \
   -n $AKS_NAME \
   -g $group --admin

Demo app

deploy

- envsubst is a nice util to substitute env variables in text files

- rest is normal k8s deployment



# deploy ingress
k apply -f ingress/ingress.yaml

# deploy data api
envsubst < data-api.yaml | k apply -f -

# deploy frontend
envsubst < frontend.yaml | k apply -f -
    
# deploy ingress rules
k apply -f ingress-rules.yaml

AKS - sum up

Magic of K8s: write one - use everywhere
Windows nodes are supported as GA
Good (not great just good) integration with other Azure services
Pricing similar to GKE or EKS
Logs can be rather expensive, so be careful

Making it secure

Normal way

Use DNS Zone
Use Let's Encrypt
Attach public IP to DNS
Install cert-manager
...

Let's hack a bit

Use Cloudflare
Fill only IP address (can be done with code)

Queue

Options

Azure Service Bus
Azure Event Hub
Azure Event Grid

Service	Purpose	Type	When to use
Event Grid	Reactive programming	Event distribution (discrete)	React to status changes
Event Hubs	Big data pipeline	Event streaming (series)	Telemetry and distributed data streaming
Service Bus	High-value enterprise messaging	Message	Order processing and financial transactions

What? When? Why?

What about RabbitMQ?

AMPQ 1.0 protocol is supported by:

Azure Service Bus Messaging
Azure Event Hubs

What about Kafka?

Azure Event Hubs for Apache Kafka
Use Kafka Connect or MirrorMaker to talk to Event Hubs without changing a line of code

Microservices

on

Azure

Who am I?

Piotr Stapp

What about microservices experience?

The app

Microservices

Microservices

Database

Options (built-in)

Where is MongoDB or Cassandra?

Azure Cosmos DB

Using

Azure CLI

Making it cheap

Funny error

Build our app

Options

Container registry

Create Azure Container Registry

Build an App

Hosting simple

Azure Web App

App Plan

Prepare deployment

Deploy

data-api

Deploy frontend

Sum up

Hosting advanced

Azure Kubernetes Service

Create

Get kubectl credentials

Demo app

deploy

AKS - sum up

Making it secure

Normal way

Let's hack a bit

Queue

Options

What? When? Why?

What about RabbitMQ?

What about Kafka?

The end?

Not yet :)