How to Design a Cloud Architecture: 4 Tips for Getting Your Setup Just Right

Will it withstand growth and meet your company's future business requirements? Will it keep up with the emerging technologies? Will it be robust enough to distribute resources dynamically for.... years to come? These are the legitimate questions that you must be asking yourself right now, questions that all root from a core dilemma: how to design a cloud architecture.

What does a “well-architected” cloud structure even mean?

How does it look like? What technologies should this robust, reliable and efficient setup include? What are the key factors to consider when planning it? The main steps to take when building your well-defined structure?

Here are the best practices to follow in order to... future-proof your cloud architecture:

 

1.Think Through and Carefully Plan Every Aspect of Your Setup

It's such a cliche, yet it's true: planning is everything. Even when it comes to architecting a robust and efficient cloud.

You'll need to think through not just every technology and component included in the anatomy of your structure, but all the relationships and future interactions between them, as well.

It's a complex network made of front-end and back-end platforms, various network resources and cloud-based delivery systems that you're about to build.

One that should behave almost like a... living organism. 

In this respect, not only that every component should work autonomously, but in sync with all the other ones, as well. So that the “cluster”, as a whole, should provide all the needed functionality.

 

2. Make Sure It's Built to Scale and That It Meets Interoperability Demands

When wondering how to design a cloud architecture you're actually asking yourself how to build a structure that:

  • scales its capabilities — network resources, storage capacity, computational efficiency — to cope with a future increase in usage
  • leverages open standards that support interoperability and compatibility between the whole ecosystem of cloud providers and on-premise systems
  • taps into the convenience of standardized software containers to be deployed across different platforms

     

3. Ensure It's Robust Enough to Accommodate All Your App's Needs

For, you won't be merely moving data from your enterprise architecture to a new cloud-based setup.

You'll first need to make sure that this new structure is robust enough, equipped with plenty of cloud-native features, to meet your app's specific needs (performance, storage, and operational needs). Especially if it integrates with heavy and complex systems like ERP or CRM.

 

4. How to Design a Cloud Architecture: Make It Secure, Make It Reliable

“How to design a cloud architecture?” 

The 2 most important factors to consider are:

  1. reliability
  2. security

First, you need to ensure that your structure is solid enough to withstand the whole network, to cope with high bandwidth needs. Also, make sure that it has low latency so that end-users can switch swiftly and seamlessly from one server/cloud provider to another.

Furthermore, you shouldn't rely exclusively on your cloud service provider's security protocols. Instead, back them up with your own set of security policies, implementing them in every layer of your architecture.

And mind you don't isolate them from the other services in your structure...

The END!

These are 4 best practices to adopt if you're planning to “take the leap” and migrate everything to the cloud.

If you want to make sure that your cloud structure:

  • is well-defined
  • is well-architected
  • is robust enough to withstand a heavy network of technologies and resources
  • is reliable enough to withstand future growth

And not just another randomly built cloud construction that will turn out to be ineffective, over the years, when higher business demands and newly-emerged technologies challenge its capabilities.

Photo by Dallas Reedy on Unsplash