Layered cloud architecture design

In this article This library of content presents a structured approach for designing applications on Azure that are scalable, secure, resilient, and highly available. The guidance is based on proven practices that we have learned from customer engagements. Introduction The cloud is changing how applications are designed and secured. Instead of monoliths, applications are decomposed into smaller, decentralized services. These services communicate through APIs or by using asynchronous messaging or eventing. Applications scale horizontally, adding new instances as demand requires. These trends bring new challenges. Application states are distributed. Operations are done in parallel and asynchronously. Applications must be resilient when failures occur. Malicious actors continuously target applications. Deployments must be automated and predictable. Monitoring and telemetry are critical for gaining insight into the system. This guide is designed to help you navigate these changes. Traditional on-premises Modern cloud Monolithic Designed for predictable scalability Relational database Synchronized processing Design to avoid failures (MTBF) Occasional large updates Manual management Snowflake servers Decomposed Designed for elastic scale Polyglot persistence (mix of storage technologies) Asynchronous processing Design for failure (MTTR) Frequent small updates Automated self-management Immutable infrastructure How this guidance is structured The Azure application architecture fun...

All of the physical manifestations of cloud computing can be arranged into a layered picture that encompasses anything from software systems to hardware appliances. Utilizing cloud resources can provide the “computer horsepower” needed to deliver services. This layer is frequently done utilizing a data center with dozens or even millions of stacked nodes. Because it can be constructed from a range of resources, including clusters and even networked PCs, cloud infrastructure can be heterogeneous in character. The infrastructure can also include database systems and other storage services. The core middleware, whose goals are to create an optimal runtime environment for applications and to best utilize resources, manages the physical infrastructure. Virtualization technologies are employed at the bottom of the stack to ensure runtime environment modification, application isolation, sandboxing, and service quality. At this level, hardware virtualization is most frequently utilized. The distributed infrastructure is exposed as a collection of virtual computers via hypervisors, which control the pool of available resources. By adopting virtual machine technology, it is feasible to precisely divide up hardware resources like CPU and memory as well as virtualize particular devices to accommodate user and application needs. Application Layer • The application layer, which is at the top of the stack, is where the actual cloud apps are located. Cloud applications, as opposed to trad...

In this chapter, we are going to cover the layered architecture, what it is, and in what cases it is the perfect solution for a design problem. At the end of the chapter, I will show you a real-word example (Amaze project management software), and then you will solve a similar case applying what you’ve learned. What Is Layered Architecture? Have you ever wondered how Google makes Gmail work in different languages all over the world? Users can use Gmail every day in English, Spanish, French, Russian, and many more languages. Did Google develop different Gmail applications for each country? Of course not. They developed an internal version that does all the message processing, and then developed different external user interfaces that work in many languages. Google developed the Gmail application in different layers: • There is an internal layer that does all the processing. • There is an external layer that communicates with the users in their language. • There is also another layer that interacts with a database where user email messages are stored (millions or maybe billions). Gmail is divided into at least three layers, every one of them has a mission, and they exist separately to handle different processes at different levels. It is an excellent example of a layered architecture. What Is the Structure of a Layered Architecture? Let’s see what this looks like: Layered architecture As you can see in the diagram above, a standard layered architecture has five parts: • User...

Information security has always been a complex subject, and it evolves quickly with the creative ideas and implementations of attackers and security researchers. Security is one of the most important aspects of any architecture. Good security provides confidentiality, integrity, and availability assurances against deliberate attacks and abuse of your valuable data and systems. Losing these assurances can harm your business operations and revenue, and your organization's reputation. Note Learn how cloud security is an ongoing journey of incremental progress and maturity, in Here are some broad categories to consider when you design a security system: Azure provides a wide range of security tools and capabilities. These are just some of the key security services available in Azure: • • • • • • • • For a more comprehensive description of Azure security tools and capabilities, see Introduction to security on Azure If you're new to security on Azure, the best way to learn more is with Here are two learning paths to get you started: • • Path to production • To secure Azure application workloads, you use protective measures like authentication and encryption in the applications themselves. You can also add security layers to the virtual machine (VM) networks that host the applications. See • Zero Trust is a proactive, integrated approach to security across all layers of the digital estate. It explicitly and continuously verifies every transaction, asserts least privilege, and rel...