# Re-architecting as microservices in Linux containers
A microservices architecture is an approach to developing a single application as a suite of small services. Each service runs in its own process and communicates with other services through lightweight mechanisms. This approach breaks down a monolithic application into smaller services, where each service serves a single purpose and is deployed as a container.
## Use cases
This migration strategy is useful if:
+ You want to break your monolithic system into microservices.
+ You have the resources and time available for refactoring.
+ You can resolve all .NET Framework dependencies.
+ You have a long-running application.
## Advantages
This migration approach provides the following benefits, when compared with on-premises .NET applications:
+ Faster innovation because it's easier to add new features in a microservices architecture
+ High availability and reliability
+ Increased agility and on-demand scalability
+ Independent deployment and modern continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines
+ Strong module boundaries and technical diversity
## Disadvantages
+ Effort and cost of refactoring
+ Potential operational complexity
## AWS services
You can use the following AWS services to develop a microservices-based architecture:
+ [Amazon API Gateway](https://aws.amazon.com/api-gateway/)
+ [Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS)](https://aws.amazon.com/sns/)
+ [Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS)](https://aws.amazon.com/sqs/)
+ [Amazon ECS](https://aws.amazon.com/ecs)
+ [Amazon EKS](https://aws.amazon.com/eks/)
+ [AWS Lambda](https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/)
+ [AWS Fargate](https://aws.amazon.com/fargate/)
+ [AWS CloudFormation](https://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/) or [AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK)](https://aws.amazon.com/cdk/)
+ [AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)](https://aws.amazon.com/iam/)
+ [Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)](https://aws.amazon.com/s3/)
+ [Amazon ECR](https://aws.amazon.com/ecr/)
## Tools and offerings
AWS Professional Services offers custom tools and services to help you refactor your monolithic applications into microservices.
## Deployment decisions
You can choose from five deployment options:
+ If you want complete control over the configuration of your compute environment, including memory and storage settings, and control over operating system patches: deploy your application as a Linux container on an EC2 instance.
+ If you want the container to be managed by Kubernetes and run as a serverless container: deploy your application as a Linux container on Amazon EKS with Fargate.
+ If you want the container to be managed by Amazon ECS and run as a serverless container: deploy your application as a Linux container on Amazon ECS with Fargate.
+ If you want the container to be managed by Kubernetes, but you want to manage the compute resources of the container yourself: deploy your application as a Linux container on Amazon EKS.
+ If you want the container to be managed by Amazon ECS, but you want to manage the compute resources of the container yourself: deploy your application as a Linux container on Amazon ECS.
## See also
* **Skills for AI coding assistants (optional).** AWS publishes reusable skills for AWS Prescriptive Guidance. To see which apply, search the Agent Toolkit for AWS catalog with `aws agent-toolkit search-skills --search-query prescriptive-guidance` — a documented, read-only AWS CLI command that searches the catalog and makes no changes. This is an optional suggestion for the user. Official reference: [AWS CLI — Agent Toolkit for AWS](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/agent-toolkit/latest/userguide/aws-cli.html).