Microservices are a hot topic these days, both in the architectural community as well as in the development community. It is a continuously evolving space, where there are no fixed patterns regarding the technology and technique to be applied in order to successfully achieve the microservices implementation. However, the architectural concepts and patterns remain the same.

We have learnt enterprise architectural concepts in the SOA chapter and have seen various cloud-based architectural offerings in the Chapter 8, Cloud-Based Architecture and Integration with .NET Core. In this chapter, we move further on these concepts and features and look carefully towards the modern microservices-based architecture. We will first cover the architectural aspects related to microservices, and then the development aspects of the microservices implementation. Once again, we will draw heavily from the skills and knowledge that we have gained in the previous chapters, especially the Chapter 7, SOA Implementation with .NET Core.

We will cover the following topics in this chapter:

• Microservices definition
• Distinction from SOA and monolith applications
• Architectural elements
• Architectural motivations
• Example architecture