Cloud Architecture Demystified: Understand how to design sustainable architectures in the world of Agile, DevOps, and Cloud (English Edition)

By Keshri Asthana and Ankur Mittal

As more and more businesses move their operations to the cloud, understanding cloud architecture becomes crucial for anyone involved in IT, software development, or data management. If you want to leverage the power of the cloud to deliver efficient and resilient services, then this book is for you.

This book is a comprehensive guide that will help you with the knowledge and insights to successfully navigate the challenges of Agile development and cloud computing. With its practical advice and in-depth analysis, this book offers a deep understanding of key topics such as multi-cloud adoption, cloud deployment costs, security considerations, availability and disaster recovery, and the integration of Agile methodologies with cloud architecture. It also explores the traits of a good cloud solution architect, the importance of treating data and databases separately, and the impact of public cloud on software architecture.

Whether you're a seasoned architect or new to cloud solutions, this book provides valuable guidance for designing robust and effective cloud-based systems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BPB Online LLP
• Release date: May 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9789355518248

Book preview

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HAPTER

1

Ambivalence of Multi-Cloud

Introduction

Let us start with a short introduction of Cloud computing. Cloud computing can be defined as the availability of compute, storage, and networking on-demand. Users do not get involved with direct management of the data center. The data center is shared among many users over the internet. Large cloud platforms have made their presence over multiple locations and countries. Cloud computing has helped consumers with low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) due to economies of scale.

Structure

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

Multi-Cloud computing the ambivalence

Multi-Cloud computing reference architecture

Multi-Cloud governance and management

Cloud usability and Multi-Cloud computing

Domain-driven design and Multi-Cloud computing

Hub and spoke architecture – Multi-Cloud computing

Objectives

Multi-cloud is a puzzle the companies are trying to deploy and solve. In this chapter, we'll take you through the aspects to be kept in mind when architecting a multi cloud environment and deploying it. We will also be talking about the things to be kept in mind when it comes to security and governance when deploying a multi cloud environment for an organization.

Multi-cloud computing

IT infrastructure costs are normally seen as cost centers for companies, and public cloud computing allows them to minimize upfront capital expenditure and helps improve their cash flows. Due to its capability to support Infrastructure-as-Code and its partially readymade environment, Public Cloud allows enterprises to get their applications up and running faster. Infrastructure has better manageability and needs less maintenance. The resources are more agile, and changes can be made quickly. Public Cloud also enables capability to handle fluctuations in workloads.

The recent uptake of cloud technologies like Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Office 365, Amazon Web Services, Google GSuite and Google Cloud platform shows the next trend of the industry.

Information, data, and information technology are meant to get complex as they grow and progress by the day, and the last 40-50 years are testaments of this. Technologies like deployment platforms, programing languages, databases, security, infrastructure operations etc. have become more complex over the years. At a given time, companies use the best of available technologies to solve their problems and thus, keep building multiple layers. A new deployment betters and covers the gaps of previous deployments, and this goes on. Due to its agile nature, cloud has made these changes even faster. Apart from deployment, companies are now able to select technologies available in the marketplace and deploy, un-deploy or upgrade at a super faster pace.

Another emerging trend is the use of multiple cloud platform and multiple cloud products. For example, companies are using Microsoft Office 365 for productivity, Salesforce for CRM, Adobe Cloud for Creativity, etc. They are migrating applications and data to Azure and Amazon Web Services. They are migrating machine learning-based systems to Google Cloud Platform and Azure. They are adopting IoT systems, edge computing and building Hybrid environment for their business.

This has made companies multi-cloud computing environments. Seldom do we see an organization not using multi-cloud technology today.

The Ambivalence

While deploying multi-cloud environments and multi-cloud products Chief Information Officers (CIOs), Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) and Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) face challenges and have to make tough decisions about how/what/when to use which cloud product. They face equal challenges from users and the support staff on running and maintaining the multi-cloud environment. Multiple factors govern and determine whether the decisions and the deployments serve their purpose. We have seen multiple failures and success stories of multi-cloud deployments. In this chapter, we are going to take you through some of the important factors/decisions/actions that are recommended when deploying or implementing multi-cloud environment.

Multi-Cloud computing reference architecture

Cloud selection must be a methodical exercise with a proper comprehensive enterprise-wide architecture. Random and non-roadmap-based cloud deployments will not help achieve anticipated business value. They will increase Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), including management and operational costs, and they will also make security operations a major headache.

We would, thus, recommend starting with an enterprise-wide multi-cloud architecture. To have an effective enterprise-wide architecture for cloud deployment, we would start with reusing learnings from global standards and extend it for multi-cloud environment.

Cloud Computing Reference Architecture from National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is widely referred by CIOs of the organization, and it identifies the major actors, their activities, and functions in cloud computing. The following diagram depicts a generic high-level architecture and is intended to facilitate the understanding of the requirements, uses, characteristics and standards of cloud computing.

Figure 1.1: Cloud Computing Reference Architecture

Reference: NIST Cloud Computing Reference Architecture, Special Publication 500-292

The image details out:

Cloud Consumer: A person or organization that maintains a business relationship with and uses service from cloud providers.

Cloud Provider: A person, organization, or entity responsible for making a service available to interested parties.

Cloud Auditor: A party that can conduct independent assessment of cloud services, information system operations, performance, and security of the cloud implementation.

Cloud Broker: An entity that manages the use, performance, and delivery of cloud services, and negotiates relationships between cloud providers and cloud consumers.

Cloud Carrier: An intermediary that provides connectivity and transport of cloud services from cloud providers to cloud consumers.

Let us extend this reference architecture for multi-cloud deployment:

Figure 1.2: Multi-Cloud Computing Reference Architecture

Cloud Provider: Multiple cloud providers will be providing services to the organization. The cloud providers will be providing applications, services or platform based on their capabilities and the selection by the technology and the functional team.

Cloud Broker: Multiple cloud brokers provide services and cloud servicing capabilities to the organizations. The brokers will be selected based on their specialization and area of expertise.

Cloud Carrier: One or many cloud carriers would be providing connectivity to the cloud data centers from the user locations.

The cloud brokers and the cloud carriers can be common across multiple cloud providers.

Simplifying Multi-Cloud computing architecture

It is obvious from the above-mentioned multi-cloud architecture that the more cloud providers we have, the more complex it becomes. How do you simplify this architecture to make it more efficient and usable?

First thing that I would want you to consider is rationalizing the cloud providers based on the capabilities and reusing them for multiple use cases. Here’s an example of reusing the same cloud provider to provide multiple services:

Figure 1.3: Simplifying Multi-Cloud Computing Architecture Option 1

For example, if you select Office 365 from Microsoft, you can very well use Azure for IaaS and PaaS workloads. You can also reuse Dynamics 365 for CRM. If you are using Google Cloud Services for IaaS and PaaS, you can reuse the GSuite. If you are Amazon Web Services for IaaS and PaaS, you can reuse Alexa for business.

Another option that you could consider is using a cloud broker with capabilities stretching across multiple cloud providers and multiple cloud services. Cloud brokers will help stitch together multiple services from multiple cloud providers, abstracting the cloud environment to the consumers.

Figure 1.4: Simplifying Multi-Cloud Computing Architecture Option 2

We should also think on the lines of reducing the cloud carriers and reuse a carrier which can connect with multiple clouds and services.

Figure 1.5: Simplifying Multi-Cloud Computing Architecture Option 3

The success of multi-cloud deployment in the organization will completely depend on the simplicity and practicality of the reference architecture. This will be the first step to removing the ambivalence around adopting multi-cloud architecture in an organization.

Multi-Cloud governance and management

Organizations and architects are deploying and adopting multiple cloud products and building multiple cloud layers in the organization. This brings another aspect to the fore: management and governance of multi-cloud.

Cloud management and governance comprises of the following areas: