first version of the knowledge base :)

20 - Knowledge/infrastructure/service-architecture-patterns.md

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+---
+title: Service Architecture Patterns
+description: Common service architecture patterns for self-hosted platforms and small engineering environments
+tags:
+  - architecture
+  - services
+  - infrastructure
+category: infrastructure
+created: 2026-03-14
+updated: 2026-03-14
+---
+
+# Service Architecture Patterns
+
+## Summary
+
+Service architecture patterns describe how applications are packaged, connected, exposed, and operated. In self-hosted environments, the most useful patterns balance simplicity, isolation, and operability rather than chasing scale for its own sake.
+
+## Why it matters
+
+Architecture decisions affect deployment complexity, failure domains, recovery steps, and long-term maintenance. Small environments benefit from choosing patterns that remain understandable without full-time platform engineering overhead.
+
+## Core concepts
+
+- Single-service deployment: one service per VM or container stack
+- Shared platform services: DNS, reverse proxy, monitoring, identity, backups
+- Stateful versus stateless workloads
+- Explicit ingress, persistence, and dependency boundaries
+- Loose coupling through DNS, reverse proxies, and documented interfaces
+
+## Practical usage
+
+Useful patterns for self-hosted systems include:
+
+- Reverse proxy plus multiple backend services
+- Dedicated database service with application separation
+- Utility VMs or containers for platform services
+- Private admin interfaces with public application ingress kept separate
+
+Example dependency view:
+
+```text
+Client -> Reverse proxy -> Application -> Database
+                       -> Identity provider
+                       -> Monitoring and logs
+```
+
+## Best practices
+
+- Keep stateful services isolated and clearly backed up
+- Make ingress paths and dependencies easy to trace
+- Reuse shared platform services where they reduce duplication
+- Prefer a small number of well-understood patterns across the environment
+
+## Pitfalls
+
+- Putting every service into one giant stack with unclear boundaries
+- Mixing public ingress and administrative paths without review
+- Scaling architecture complexity before operational need exists
+- Depending on undocumented local assumptions between services
+
+## References
+
+- [Martin Fowler: MonolithFirst](https://martinfowler.com/bliki/MonolithFirst.html)
+- [The Twelve-Factor App](https://12factor.net/)
+- [NGINX: Reverse Proxy](https://docs.nginx.com/nginx/admin-guide/web-server/reverse-proxy/)