Cloud Native

Chapter 3. Designing Cloud Native Applications

Application architectures are a result of unique business requirements, which makes it difficult to come up with an architectural blueprint that is generally applicable. Cloud native applications are no exception to that. A good way to approach designing cloud native applications is to consider five key areas when starting with the initial design: operational excellence, security, reliability, scalability, and cost. From an actual implementation perspective there are certain building blocks, patterns, and technologies that are proven to be very useful in solving specific problems. Besides discussing these five key areas, this chapter also covers the most common architectural building blocks.

The goal of this chapter is to equip you with the knowledge necessary to design and build cloud native architectures effectively.

Fundamentals of Cloud Native Applications

All the major cloud providers offer guidance on how to build applications targeting their respective cloud environments. Microsoft Azure has its cloud application architecture and cloud patterns guide, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has its well-architected framework, and Google offers various guides on how to build cloud native applications. Although those guides are more specific to their services offered in each environment, you can identify five generally applicable pillars that you should keep in mind regardless of the cloud provider you are choosing.

Operational Excellence ...