Reference Architectures
Explore proven reference architectures for cloud migrations. Battle-tested patterns and designs from AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
Serverless Web Application
Reference architecture for building serverless web applications with API Gateway, Lambda, and DynamoDB
Event-Driven Microservices
Architecture pattern for building loosely-coupled microservices using event sourcing and CQRS
Modern Data Lake Architecture
Lakehouse architecture combining data lake flexibility with data warehouse capabilities
Zero Trust Network Architecture
Security architecture assuming no implicit trust, verifying every request
Monolith to Microservices Migration
Step-by-step architecture for decomposing monolithic applications into microservices
ML Platform Architecture
End-to-end machine learning platform for training, deploying, and monitoring models
Multi-Region Active-Active
Architecture for globally distributed applications with active-active failover
API Gateway Pattern
Centralized API management with authentication, rate limiting, and request routing
Event-Driven Microservices on Kubernetes
A Kubernetes-native reference design for loosely coupled microservices that communicate through Kafka events with service-level autoscaling.
EKS Production Container Platform
A hardened, multi-account Amazon EKS platform for running production microservices with GitOps delivery and full observability.
Serverless API on Azure Functions
An event-driven serverless API built on Azure Functions with Cosmos DB and API Management for pay-per-use, low-operations workloads.
Serverless API on GCP Cloud Run
A container-based serverless API on Google Cloud Run with Cloud SQL and Pub/Sub, scaling to zero while keeping standard container portability.
Container Platform with Service Mesh
A Kubernetes container platform with an Istio service mesh providing mTLS, traffic management, and uniform observability across services.
Multi-Region Active-Active Web Platform
A multi-cloud active-active web platform serving users from multiple regions with global routing and replicated data for high availability.
Autoscaling Web Tier on AWS
A classic three-tier web application on AWS with an autoscaling compute tier behind a load balancer and a managed relational database.
Batch and HPC on Azure
A scalable batch and high-performance computing platform on Azure Batch with spot compute, parallel storage, and a job scheduler.
Edge Compute and CDN Platform
A globally distributed edge platform running compute at CDN points of presence for ultra-low-latency personalization and API responses.
Blue-Green Deployments on Kubernetes
A Kubernetes delivery architecture using blue-green and progressive rollouts to ship changes with instant rollback and zero downtime.
GKE Autopilot Application Platform
A managed GKE Autopilot platform on GCP that runs containers without node operations, with workload identity and integrated observability.
AKS Enterprise Container Platform
An enterprise Azure Kubernetes Service platform with private networking, Entra ID identity, and policy-governed GitOps delivery.
ECS Fargate Microservices Platform
A serverless container microservices platform on AWS ECS Fargate with service discovery, autoscaling, and no servers to manage.
Hybrid Cloud Bursting Platform
A hybrid platform that runs steady workloads on-premises and bursts peak demand to public cloud Kubernetes for elastic capacity.
Serverless Event Processing Pipeline on AWS
A fully serverless event-ingestion and processing pipeline on AWS using Lambda, EventBridge, and DynamoDB with no servers to operate.
Multi-Cloud Portable Container Platform
A portable Kubernetes platform deployed identically across AWS, Azure, and GCP using GitOps and infrastructure as code to avoid lock-in.
CQRS and Event Sourcing on Cloud
A cloud microservices design separating write and read models with event sourcing for full auditability and independent scaling.
On-Prem to Kubernetes Landing Zone
A cloud landing zone for migrating on-premises virtual machine workloads to Kubernetes with networking, identity, and governance baked in.
Batch Jobs Platform on Kubernetes
A Kubernetes-native batch platform using job queues and Argo Workflows to run scheduled and on-demand container jobs at scale.
Lakehouse on Databricks
A unified lakehouse on Databricks combining Delta Lake storage, Unity Catalog governance, and SQL plus ML compute on AWS.
Modern Data Warehouse on Snowflake
A cloud data warehouse on Snowflake with ELT ingestion, virtual warehouses, and governed marts feeding BI across Azure.
BigQuery Analytics Platform
A serverless analytics platform on Google BigQuery with streaming ingestion, dbt transforms, and Looker for enterprise BI.
Real-Time Streaming Platform with Kafka
A real-time streaming platform on Kafka with stream processing, a schema registry, and exactly-once pipelines on Kubernetes.
Change Data Capture Pipeline with Debezium
A CDC pipeline streaming row-level changes from operational databases into a warehouse using Debezium and Kafka on AWS.
Medallion Lakehouse on Azure
A bronze-silver-gold medallion lakehouse on Azure with Data Lake Storage, Delta tables, and Synapse for serving.
Data Mesh Platform
A decentralized data mesh where domain teams own data products on a self-serve platform with federated governance across multi-cloud.
Batch ETL on Apache Spark
A scalable batch ETL platform on Apache Spark running on Kubernetes, transforming large datasets from object storage into curated tables.
Event Streaming on Amazon Kinesis
A managed event streaming platform on Amazon Kinesis with serverless processing and real-time analytics on AWS.
HTAP OLTP and OLAP Platform
A hybrid transactional and analytical platform that serves OLTP and OLAP on one distributed SQL store with columnar replicas.
Feature Store Platform
A feature store on GCP providing consistent online and offline ML features with point-in-time correctness via Feast.
Vector Search Platform for RAG
A vector search platform on Azure powering retrieval-augmented generation with embeddings, a vector database, and hybrid search.
Reverse ETL Data Activation Platform
A reverse ETL platform that syncs modeled warehouse data back into operational SaaS tools for marketing and sales activation on GCP.
Streaming Lakehouse with Flink and Iceberg
A streaming lakehouse on AWS where Apache Flink writes continuously into Apache Iceberg tables for unified streaming and batch analytics.
IoT Time-Series Analytics Platform
An IoT analytics platform on Azure ingesting device telemetry into a time-series store for real-time monitoring and forecasting.
Columnar OLAP Analytics with ClickHouse
A high-speed columnar OLAP platform on ClickHouse for sub-second aggregation over billions of rows, deployed on Kubernetes.
Open Table Format Analytics with Iceberg and Trino
A vendor-neutral analytics platform using Apache Iceberg tables on object storage queried by Trino across multiple clouds.
Data Observability and Quality Platform
A data observability platform on Snowflake that monitors freshness, volume, and schema with automated tests and lineage on AWS.
Graph Analytics Platform
A graph analytics platform on GCP using a property graph database for relationship-heavy queries, fraud detection, and recommendations.
Retrieval-Augmented Generation Platform on AWS
A reference design for a production RAG system on AWS that grounds LLM answers in private documents using a managed vector store and Bedrock models.
LLM Gateway and Proxy on Kubernetes
A reference design for a self-hosted LLM gateway on Kubernetes that centralizes routing, rate limiting, cost tracking, and guardrails across multiple model providers.
Real-Time Model Serving on GCP
A reference design for low-latency online inference on GCP using Vertex AI endpoints, autoscaling, and a feature lookup path for sub-100ms predictions.
Batch Inference Pipeline on Azure
A reference design for scheduled, large-scale offline scoring on Azure using Synapse, Azure ML batch endpoints, and a data lake for inputs and results.
End-to-End MLOps Platform on Kubernetes
A reference design for a portable MLOps platform on Kubernetes covering pipelines, experiment tracking, a model registry, serving, and monitoring.
Feature Store and Online Serving on AWS
A reference design for a dual offline/online feature store on AWS that keeps training and serving features consistent and serves them at low latency.
Multi-Agent LLM System on Azure
A reference design for a multi-agent application on Azure where specialized LLM agents coordinate through an orchestrator and shared tools to complete complex tasks.
LLM Fine-Tuning Pipeline on GCP
A reference design for fine-tuning open LLMs on GCP using Vertex AI custom training, parameter-efficient methods, and an evaluation gate before deployment.
Vector Database Platform on Kubernetes
A reference design for a self-hosted, multi-tenant vector database platform on Kubernetes that powers semantic search and RAG retrieval at scale.
Recommendation System on AWS
A reference design for a two-stage recommender on AWS combining candidate retrieval and ranking, with streaming feedback and real-time serving.
Real-Time Fraud Detection on GCP
A reference design for streaming fraud detection on GCP that scores transactions in milliseconds using a feature store, rules, and an ML model.
Computer Vision Inference Pipeline on Azure
A reference design for an image and video computer-vision pipeline on Azure spanning ingestion, GPU inference, and human-in-the-loop review.
LLM Observability Stack on Kubernetes
A reference design for an LLM observability platform on Kubernetes that captures traces, evaluations, cost, and quality signals across AI applications.
AI Governance and Model Risk Platform (Multi-Cloud)
A reference design for a multi-cloud AI governance platform that inventories models, enforces policy, runs risk reviews, and maintains an audit trail.
LLM Guardrails and Safety Layer on AWS
A reference design for an LLM safety layer on AWS that filters inputs and outputs, blocks prompt injection, and enforces content and PII policies.
Streaming ML Feature Pipeline on GCP
A reference design for a real-time feature engineering pipeline on GCP that computes streaming aggregates and serves them to online models consistently.
Self-Hosted Open LLM Inference on Kubernetes
A reference design for serving open-weight LLMs on Kubernetes with GPU autoscaling, continuous batching, and an OpenAI-compatible API.
Conversational AI Assistant on Azure
A reference design for an enterprise conversational assistant on Azure that combines RAG, tool calling, and memory behind a governed orchestration layer.
Data Labeling and Training Platform on AWS
A reference design for a closed-loop data labeling and training platform on AWS that turns raw data into labeled datasets and continuously retrains models.
Zero-Trust Network Architecture on AWS
Identity-aware, least-privilege access design that authenticates and authorizes every request regardless of network location.
Hub-and-Spoke Cloud Network on Azure
Centralized hub virtual network for shared services with isolated spoke networks for workloads, connected by peering.
Secure Landing Zone on Google Cloud
Opinionated, policy-governed foundation of folders, projects, networking, and guardrails for onboarding workloads safely.
Multi-Region Disaster Recovery on AWS
Cross-region pilot-light and warm-standby design that meets aggressive recovery objectives for critical workloads.
Active-Active Resilience Across Clouds
Multi-cloud design that serves traffic from two providers simultaneously to survive a full provider outage.
WAF and DDoS Edge Protection on Google Cloud
Edge security design combining a web application firewall, DDoS mitigation, and a CDN to protect public applications.
Centralized Secrets Management Platform
HashiCorp Vault-based platform for issuing, rotating, and auditing secrets and short-lived credentials across hybrid environments.
SSO and Identity Federation with OIDC and SAML
Centralized single sign-on using Entra ID as identity provider, federating apps over OpenID Connect and SAML.
Customer Identity and Access Management Platform
Scalable CIAM design on AWS for user sign-up, social login, and token-based authorization for consumer applications.
PKI and Certificate Lifecycle Management
Private public-key infrastructure for issuing, renewing, and revoking TLS certificates automatically across services.
SIEM and Security Data Lake on Google Cloud
Scalable security analytics platform that ingests logs, detects threats, and supports investigation over a data lake.
Backup and Restore Architecture on Azure
Policy-driven backup design with immutable, geo-redundant recovery points and tested restore for workloads and data.
Observability and SLO Platform on Kubernetes
Unified metrics, logs, and traces platform with OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, and SLO-based alerting on Kubernetes.
Privileged Access Management on AWS
Just-in-time, audited access to production with short-lived elevated credentials and session recording.
Service Mesh with mTLS on Kubernetes
Istio-based service mesh providing mutual TLS, traffic management, and observability for microservices.
Global Edge and CDN Architecture
Multi-CDN edge design that caches content, runs logic at the edge, and routes users to the nearest healthy origin.
Hybrid Cloud Connectivity Network
Resilient private connectivity between on-premises data centers and cloud using dedicated links and redundant VPNs.
Cloud Security Posture Management
Continuous, agentless detection of misconfigurations and compliance drift across AWS, Azure, and GCP accounts.
Chaos Engineering and Resilience Platform on AWS
Controlled fault-injection platform that validates resilience hypotheses against production-like systems safely.
API Gateway with Backends-for-Frontends
An edge API gateway fronting channel-specific BFF services that aggregate microservices for web, mobile, and partner clients.
Federated GraphQL Supergraph
A federated GraphQL architecture where independently owned subgraphs compose into one supergraph behind a managed gateway.
gRPC Service Mesh for Internal APIs
A high-performance internal API platform using gRPC over a service mesh for typed, low-latency service-to-service calls.
Event-Driven Backbone with Kafka
An organization-wide event streaming backbone on Kafka that decouples producers and consumers through durable, replayable topics.
CQRS with Event Sourcing
A command-query separated system where state is derived from an append-only event log and read models are projected for queries.
Saga Orchestration for Distributed Transactions
An orchestrated saga design that coordinates multi-service business transactions with compensating actions instead of two-phase commit.
Reliable Webhook Delivery Platform
A platform that delivers outbound webhooks to customer endpoints with retries, signing, idempotency, and per-tenant rate control.
Pub/Sub Fan-Out for Event Distribution
A publish-subscribe fan-out architecture that broadcasts each event to many independent consumers with per-subscriber queues.
Enterprise API Management Platform
A full API management platform providing a developer portal, gateway, monetization, and lifecycle governance for internal and partner APIs.
iPaaS Integration Hub for SaaS Connectivity
An integration platform-as-a-service hub that connects SaaS and on-prem systems with connectors, transformation, and orchestration.
High-Volume Streaming Ingestion Pipeline
A streaming ingestion pipeline that captures high-velocity event data, buffers it durably, and lands it for real-time and batch use.
Real-Time Notification Delivery System
A real-time notification system that pushes in-app, push, email, and SMS messages to users with preference and channel routing.
Event Choreography for Microservices
A choreographed event-driven design where services react to each other's domain events without a central orchestrator.
Change Data Capture Streaming Pipeline
A change-data-capture pipeline that streams database changes as events to keep downstream systems and caches in sync in near real time.
Cloud-Native REST API Platform
A versioned, API-first REST platform with contract-driven development, gateway policies, and managed data services on GCP.
Asynchronous Task Queue with Workers
A durable task queue that offloads slow or unreliable work from request handlers to scalable background workers with retries.
GraphQL BFF Gateway for Mobile
A GraphQL backend-for-frontend that aggregates microservices and optimizes payloads for bandwidth-constrained mobile clients.
Global Edge API Gateway
A globally distributed edge gateway that authenticates, caches, and routes API traffic close to users across multiple regions.
Transactional Outbox for Reliable Events
A transactional outbox design that guarantees events are published exactly when their database changes commit, avoiding dual-write loss.
Jamstack Static Site with Edge Functions
Pre-rendered static front end served from a global CDN, with dynamic behavior handled by edge functions and serverless APIs.
Server-Side Rendered Web App (Next.js) on Cloud
A Next.js application rendered on the server and streamed to the browser, backed by managed compute, caching, and a relational database.
Micro-Frontends Platform
Independently built and deployed front-end modules composed at runtime into a single web app, each owned by a separate team.
Multi-Tenant SaaS Platform
A single application instance serving many customer tenants with isolated data, per-tenant configuration, and usage-based billing.
Mobile Backend as a Service (BaaS)
A managed backend providing authentication, database, storage, push, and serverless functions to native and cross-platform mobile apps.
Real-Time Collaboration Application
A web app where many users edit shared documents concurrently, synchronized over WebSockets with conflict-free replicated data.
E-Commerce Platform on Microservices
A modular online store splitting catalog, cart, checkout, payments, and orders into independent services with event-driven coordination.
Content Platform with Global CDN
A high-traffic content site delivering articles and media worldwide through a multi-tier CDN cache in front of a publishing backend.
Progressive Web App (PWA)
An installable, offline-capable web app using service workers, a cache strategy, and push notifications to behave like a native app.
Headless CMS Content Architecture
A content repository exposing structured content over APIs to multiple front ends, decoupling authoring from presentation.
IoT Ingestion Platform
A platform that ingests telemetry from large device fleets over MQTT, processes it as a stream, and stores it for analytics and control.
Video Streaming Platform
A platform that ingests, transcodes, packages, and delivers on-demand and live video at scale using adaptive bitrate over a CDN.
Three-Tier Web Application
The classic presentation, application, and data tiers deployed on virtual machines behind a load balancer with a managed database.
Edge-Rendered Web Platform
A web app rendered at CDN edge locations using lightweight serverless runtimes for low-latency dynamic pages worldwide.
Cross-Platform Mobile App Architecture
A single Flutter or React Native codebase targeting iOS and Android, backed by a REST/GraphQL API gateway and offline cache.
SaaS Usage Metering and Billing
An event-driven metering pipeline that records product usage, aggregates it per tenant, and drives usage-based billing.
Backend-for-Frontend API Aggregation Platform
Per-client backend-for-frontend services and a GraphQL gateway that aggregate microservices into tailored, efficient API responses.
Single-Page Application with API Backend
A client-rendered SPA served from a CDN that talks to a stateless REST API, with token-based auth and a managed database.
Headless Commerce on Edge
A composable storefront where a static or edge-rendered front end consumes headless commerce, search, and payment APIs over a CDN.