Content Independent of the product

Cloud architecture

Patterns and providers — the tradeoffs that actually matter when deciding how to structure and where to run a cloud workload, not a vendor comparison. Same discipline as every other guide on this site: no invented statistics, no fabricated pricing or market-share numbers.

API gateway and service mesh architectureNorth-south versus east-west traffic, and the sidecar tradeoff a mesh actually costs Caching architecture: from CDN to application layerInvalidation, stampedes, and picking the right pattern at each layer Choosing a cloud provider: a decision frameworkA decision framework — the real inputs, and the switching-cost trap Cloud cost optimization: architecture patterns that actually save moneyArchitecture patterns that actually save money, not just a billing-dashboard exercise Cloud networking fundamentals: VPCs, subnets, and peeringVPCs, subnets, peering, and the actual path a request takes to a private database Cloud providers compared: AWS, Azure, GCP, and beyondAWS, Azure, GCP, and the specialized, developer-first, and edge-first alternatives Cloud security architecture: shared responsibility and zero trustWhy identity is the real perimeter, and the failure patterns that actually happen Container orchestration: Kubernetes architecture fundamentalsControl plane, pods as the atomic unit, and why stateful workloads are the hard part Database architecture in the cloud: replication, sharding, and consistencyReplication lag, sharding key choice, and what a managed database actually offloads Disaster recovery and multi-region architectureRTO and RPO first, then the pilot-light-to-active-active spectrum Event-driven architecture on the cloudNotification vs. state transfer vs. event sourcing, and the dual-write problem IAM architecture: roles, federation, and workload identityRBAC vs. ABAC, federation, and workload identity instead of long-lived keys Infrastructure as code: architecture and the drift problemState, drift, and blast radius — the parts that actually break in production Microservices vs. monolith: choosing cloud architectureWhat genuinely motivates a split, and the distributed-monolith anti-pattern Multi-cloud and hybrid cloud architectureWhat multi-cloud actually means in practice, and when the complexity tax is worth it Observability architecture: logs, metrics, and tracesWhy none of the three signals alone is enough, and how correlation actually works Secrets management architectureDynamic issuance, rotation, and why a static credential is a liability by design Serverless architecture patternsCold starts, the state problem, and when serverless is actually cheaper

More lands here over time — no invented statistics or a testimonial standing in for a real one, ever.