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Cloud Best Practices

Cloud architecture and design best practices

2
Best Practices
11
Stacks
1
FAQs
6
Benchmarks

Best Practices

Cloud Migration 7 Rs Strategy

A decision framework for choosing how to migrate each application to the cloud across seven options: retire, retain, rehost, relocate, repurchase, replatform, and refactor.

by Amazon Web Services

Cloud Landing Zone

A pre-configured, secure, multi-account cloud foundation with baked-in identity, networking, governance, and guardrails so teams can deploy workloads safely at scale.

by Amazon Web Services

Tutorials

How to autoscale Kubernetes nodes with the Cluster Autoscaler

Add and remove nodes automatically based on pending pods using the Cluster Autoscaler on a managed cluster.

How to provision an Amazon EKS cluster and deploy a workload

Create a managed EKS cluster with managed node groups using eksctl, then deploy and verify an application.

How to provision an Azure AKS cluster and deploy a workload

Create a managed AKS cluster with the Azure CLI, connect kubectl, and deploy an application.

How to provision a Google GKE cluster and deploy a workload

Create a GKE cluster with the gcloud CLI, connect kubectl, and deploy an application with autoscaling.

How to deploy a serverless REST API on AWS Lambda

Build and deploy a production REST API using AWS Lambda and API Gateway with infrastructure as code.

How to build an HTTP API with Azure Functions

Create and deploy a serverless HTTP-triggered API on Azure Functions using the Azure CLI and a consumption plan.

How to deploy a container to Google Cloud Run

Containerize an app and deploy it to Google Cloud Run for autoscaling, request-billed serverless hosting.

How to host a static site on Amazon S3 with CloudFront

Serve a static website from an S3 bucket behind the CloudFront CDN with HTTPS and global caching.

How to host a static site on Azure with Front Door

Serve static content from Azure Blob Storage behind Azure Front Door for global delivery and HTTPS.

How to build a REST API with Amazon API Gateway

Configure Amazon API Gateway routes, stages, and authorizers to expose backend services as a managed REST API.

How to orchestrate workflows with AWS Step Functions

Build a state machine with AWS Step Functions to orchestrate Lambda tasks with retries, branching, and error handling.

How to deploy a serverless container with Azure Container Apps

Deploy a containerized service to Azure Container Apps with scale-to-zero, ingress, and revision-based updates.

How to deploy a Python function on Google Cloud Functions

Write and deploy an HTTP-triggered Python function on Google Cloud Functions (2nd gen) with the gcloud CLI.

Checklists

Cloud Migration Checklist

End-to-end checklist for migrating workloads to cloud platforms

Cloud Migration Readiness Checklist

Verify your organization, applications, and operations are ready before moving workloads from on-premises to the cloud.

Cloud Network Security Review Checklist

Audit a cloud network's segmentation, access controls, and exposure to reduce the blast radius of a compromise.

Cloud Landing Zone Security Checklist

Verify a multi-account cloud landing zone enforces identity, network, guardrails, and logging before workloads are onboarded.

Technology Stacks

AWS Serverless Stack

Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, S3 - AWS serverless architecture

Edge Computing Stack

Cloudflare Workers, D1, R2, KV - Edge-first architecture

Knative Serverless Containers Stack

Kubernetes-based serverless stack using Knative for scale-to-zero, request-driven container workloads with event-driven autoscaling.

AWS Serverless Stack

Fully managed AWS serverless stack using Lambda, DynamoDB, and API Gateway for event-driven, pay-per-use applications with no server management.

Azure Serverless Stack

Managed Microsoft Azure serverless stack using Azure Functions and Cosmos DB for event-driven, globally distributed, pay-per-use applications.

GCP Serverless Stack

Google Cloud serverless stack using Cloud Run and Firestore for container-based, scale-to-zero applications with managed NoSQL storage.

Serverless Containers Stack

Cloud stack running standard OCI containers on managed serverless platforms for scale-to-zero, pay-per-use workloads without cluster management.

Cloudflare Workers + D1 + R2

A serverless edge stack running JavaScript at Cloudflare's edge with Workers, the D1 SQLite database, and R2 object storage for low-latency global apps.

Deno Deploy Edge

A serverless edge runtime stack built on Deno, running secure TypeScript and JavaScript globally with web-standard APIs and built-in KV storage.

Fastly Compute Edge

A high-performance edge computing stack running WebAssembly at Fastly's network for ultra-fast, secure serverless logic close to users.

SAP BTP

SAP Business Technology Platform: an enterprise PaaS for extending and integrating SAP systems, building apps with the Cloud Application Programming model, Fiori, and integration services.

FAQs

What is the difference between IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS?

These are the three main cloud service models, distinguished by how much the provider manages. **IaaS** (Infrastructure as a Service) provides raw compute, storage, and networking, such as virtual machines, leaving the operating system and applications to you. **PaaS** (Platform as a Service) adds a managed runtime and tooling so you deploy code without managing servers. **SaaS** (Software as a Service) delivers fully managed applications over the internet, where you only configure and use the software. The trade-off is control versus operational burden: IaaS gives the most control, SaaS the least.

Benchmarks

Cloud Configuration Translation

Evaluates accuracy of translating cloud configs (CloudFormation to Terraform, etc.)

Serverless Cold-Start Latency Benchmark

Measures the added latency when a serverless function must initialize a new execution environment before handling a request, across runtimes and platforms.

Autoscaling Responsiveness Benchmark

Measures how quickly and accurately an autoscaler adds or removes capacity in response to load changes, including reaction time, overshoot, and stabilization.

Cloud Storage Throughput Benchmark

Measures sustained read and write throughput, IOPS, and latency of cloud object, block, and file storage under varied access patterns and concurrency.

CDN Latency Benchmark

Measures content delivery network performance from many geographic vantage points, including edge latency, cache hit ratio, and origin offload.

Kubernetes Scheduling Latency Benchmark

Measures how quickly the Kubernetes scheduler places pods on nodes and how the control plane scales as pod, node, and churn counts grow.