Runtime Isolation Philosophies: Mapping Workflow Logic Across Containers
When you're designing a system with multiple containers, the hardest part isn't the technology—it's deciding where each piece of workflow logic lives. Should a service be its own container, or should it share one? What logic belongs in the orchestration layer, and what should be baked into the image? This guide maps out the runtime isolation philosophies that teams actually use, from strict microservices to pragmatic sidecar models. We cover the foundations that often trip up newcomers, patterns that hold up under load, anti-patterns that lead to painful rewrites, and the long-term costs of getting the boundaries wrong. You'll learn when to isolate aggressively and when to co-locate for simplicity, with concrete decision criteria and composite scenarios that reflect real trade-offs.