[cbaleanu]

From my experience, there are several issues that were mostly touched by the other commenters:

  * auth / authorization: easy to grasp, tough to implement, 
    opens a world of architectural wtfs
  * service configuration files / variables
  * understanding that more microservices can run on 
    the same host
  * system entry point, credential based, jumpbox

And the most important issue I keep seeing across the systems I work with is documentation and speed of onboarding new staff.

Happy to chat more, I am definitely not an expert on the domain but for what is worth I was technical lead (whatever that means to you) on an AWS Case Study project.

[samstave]

Well, I'd like more info...

What was the case-study? Can you link to it?

What has been your best resource to support/inform any of your arch design considerations?

[cbaleanu]

Sure, the case study would be this https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/rozetta-techno...

For architecture debates ( yes there were some :) ) the resources used would vary depending on the level of the issue at hand.

For inter-service communication we had a standardized API interface that would need to be exposed and most of the discussions would circle around how does the service solve a problem and what API does it expose to the outside world.

For general system workflow issues we would resort to diagrams or good old fashioned whiteboarding whose artifacts would also get converted into diagrams.

A general rule-of-thumb that I pushed was that every single service would be documented starting with the design process and ending with support info.

Hope that makes any sense :)