Cloud Computing: Principles and Paradigms

Chapter 18. BEST PRACTICES IN ARCHITECTING CLOUD APPLICATIONS IN THE AWS CLOUD

JINESH VARIA

INTRODUCTION

For several years, software architects have discovered and implemented several concepts and best practices to build highly scalable applications. In today's "era of tera," these concepts are even more applicable because of ever-growing datasets, unpredictable traffic patterns, and the demand for faster response times. This chapter will reinforce and reiterate some of these traditional concepts and discuss how they may evolve in the context of cloud computing. It will also discuss some unprecedented concepts, such as elasticity, that have emerged due to the dynamic nature of the cloud.

This chapter is targeted toward cloud architects who are gearing up to move an enterprise-class application from a fixed physical environment to a virtualized cloud environment. The focus of this chapter is to highlight concepts, principles, and best practices in creating new cloud applications or migrating existing applications to the cloud.

BACKGROUND

As a cloud architect, it is important to understand the benefits of cloud computing. In this section, you will learn some of the business and technical benefits of cloud computing and different Amazon Web services (AWS) available today.

Business Benefits of Cloud Computing

There are some clear business benefits to building applications in the cloud. A few of these are listed here:

Almost Zero Upfront Infrastructure Investment.

If you have to build a large-scale ...