Cloud Architecture Patterns

by Bill Wilder

If your team is investigating ways to design applications for the cloud, this concise book introduces 11 architecture patterns that can help you take advantage of cloud-platform services. You’ll learn how each of these platform-agnostic patterns work, when they might be useful in the cloud, and what impact they’ll have on your application architecture. You’ll also see an example of each pattern applied to an application built with Windows Azure. The patterns are organized into four major topics, such as scalability and handling failure, and primer chapters provide background on each topic. With the information in this book, you’ll be able to make informed decisions for designing effective cloud-native applications that maximize the value of cloud services, while also paying attention to user experience and operational efficiency. Learn about architectural patterns

Genres: Technology, Software, Programming, Computer Science, Computers, Technical, Architecture

178 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Vladimir · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shortly speaking, the book is great. Relatively small but detailed chapters focus your attention on the most valuable content only. And I think you need nothing else. Generally, it will be the best material for software engineers wanting to start learning the cloud technologies, or even, might be for those who are looking for a little bit deeper explanation of the modern distributed patterns and their origins.

[Jascha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve read this book three times already. I did love it the first time and I enjoyed reading it once again now, almost two years later. Now, equipped with the experience coming from developing and deploying highly available/scalable applications in the cloud anyway, I see it under a different light. Moreover, having read other titles on the subject during these 20 months, allowed me to better value this one.

Let’s start with the title: the title says these 200 pages are about cloud infrastructure patterns. This isn’t exactly true and could lead someone into believing that he gets something that he will not. If you do expect a problem:solution(s) book to common cloud issues, indeed, you will get disappointed. This title does not get you through cloud design challenges that you might face. It does, instead, give you guidelines, best practices that have proven successful in the development of cloud native applications.

What the author does is to present the very basic concepts that better describe a cloud native application, such as scaling in and out, eventual consistency and asynchronous communication, just to mention a couple. Two years later, and after getting through it three times, I would in fact rename this title into Introduction to cloud native application design.

The topics are accurately described, often supported with real life examples. Through the book, the author illustrates how the different concepts apply to an hypothetic (does it exist?) cloud web application called Page of Photos, hosted on Microsoft Azure.

I don’t remember seeing any schematic representation of the concepts explained, which is a big negative point. Some image appears here and there, but they do not really add any value to the reader.

My thoughts on this book definitely changed over the years: it’s a pretty decent book if you are new to the cloud and wanna get an overall idea of the best practices. It is a good starting point. But if you were already exposed to the cloud and its rules, then this book won’t give you anything.

[Ameer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of simplistic but good introduction to general cloud design patterns and architecture. Very high level and very short read.

[Simon Gianoutsos · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good summary of a variety of patterns although some are a little dated (the book was published about 9 years ago). No coverage of containers, kubernetes or serverless. Some of the constraints and pricing models have also changed with the various cloud options such as per hour pricing (which is now supports partial hours). It is worth nothing that while the patterns are relevant across numerous cloud platforms that the key example is with Azure.

[Charlie Harrington · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short but sweet primer on making design decisions for cloud applications. There’s nothing groundbreaking in here, but that’s the point - the book reinforces well-trodden, effective patterns for scale, and doesn’t forget to outline the various trade-offs in any decision. These recommended patterns will become “eventually consistent” with your own instincts and ideas, with enough time.

[Marco Neves · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit shallow for my expectations of a book published by O'Reilly.

Goes into some detail in the patterns/primers it lists, but it's far from an exhaustive list and make little to no attempt to explain interactions of different patterns or put them side by side.

Maybe worth a quick read, but not a reference worth keeping handy.

[Tonmoy Chowdhury · Rating 5 out of 5]

Made it easy to understand the design principles behind most cloud vendor services. I have already worked with AWS so reading this book further ingrained the concepts behind the design of most AWS services. The concepts learnt here can easily be applied while studying Azure and GCP as well.

[Shyam Unnithan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty basic in terms of the patterns, but as the book title says if you are using Azure it gives you a pretty good idea on how to map those patterns on Azure cloud. It is a good read for those who are just moving from architecting on prem to on cloud.

[Vera]

A good book to systematize knowledge about cloud architecture. The majority of patterns were familiar to me since I have been working with cloud computing for a couple of years. Still, a good refresh and theoretical basis for hands-on experience.

[Brian · Rating 1 out of 5]

Incredibly mediocre and very disappointing. There are interesting things to learn about cloud engineering and common practices, but you won't find them here. Somehow managed to be obscure and simplistic at the same time. Learned nothing.

[Manuel Garcia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really nice and useful :) liked it

[SD · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book that gives exposure and overview to Azure based Cloud Architecture Patterns.

[Brendan Bushbaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decent architecture patterns that have held the test of time. I think it may need a refresh but very decent for understanding how to build cloud native applications.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a good overview of why you would use certain patterns for cloud-based applications. It also provides information on how certain cloud platforms can make implementing these patterns much easier. The title include "Using Microsoft Azure," but this book has relevant information no matter what platform(s) you intend to use.

There is an application the author uses throughout the book to describe how each pattern can be applied to a concrete example. I found that helpful.

Overall, it was a good introduction to many of the things to be aware of when writing a cloud application. In fact, it brings up several things you should be concerned with when writing any server-based application and this may help to determine if a cloud platform is the right fit or overkill.

[Julio Delgado · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent introductory book. I wish I had read it 5 years ago when I started working for one of the major cloud providers in the world.

For the interested reader it lays out lots of good practices, and advice in general is sound. The topics covered can take each its own book:

* Vertical/Horizontal Scaling
* Decouple your components using queues (really, do it!)
* Autoscaling (automated resource elasticity)
* Eventual consistency
* Map reduce
* Database sharding
* Implications of the cloud being built on commodity hardware
* Busy signal, throttling and similar
* Design for failure
* Network latency
* Colocation
* Valet Key patterns (temporary access to resources)
* CDN (content delivery networks)
* Multi-region deployments

Certainly a nice and easy read.

[Sebastian Gebski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice primer on cloud architectures, or some could even say - on distributed architectures. Clear, concise and technology agnostic (even if Windows Azure is mentioned in the subtitle, no single sample of code within whole book - I usually find it a con, but in this case it wasn't a problem). Obviously, it makes whole book a bit generic, but fortunately I can't say that the topic has been watered down.

Obviously, this book is not any kind of breakthrough and it won't shake the ground beneath your feet and seed your mind with innovative start-up ideas : but it's supposed to be about patterns, right? :)

[Jeb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a product manager and I understood this book. That should inform many of you at what level this book is. For some, that might be technical, for others it might be a stick figure version that holds no interest.

Nevertheless, I found this to be a good, basic, book about best practices for implementing cloud architecture.

For the most part I think that the lessons are universal, but, it is notable that Azure is the basis for a lot of the screen shots and details. So, you will hear about Windows Azure Diagnostics and none of the competitive functions from AWS, Rackspace, etc.

[M Sheik Uduman Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very useful for people who are new to cloud computing space and going to construct/migrate application on this.

For well experts and people who have already spend their life on cloud computing, would be a refresher.

Well attempt for basic cloud computing architecture concepts.

[Rene Bard · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a high-level overview that provides an excellent introduction to patterns which also happens to reference the Azure cloud platform at the time it was written. Still relevant today because of its emphasis on concepts rather than code samples (of which there are none).

[Curtis Gibeaut · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reality is I was expecting more from this kind of book. Everything in here was sort of a no brainer.

[André Gomes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice compilation of important patterns to professionally deploy cloud applications!

If you are new to deploy in the cloud I recommend you to read this book.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

From a developers perspective - I loved reading this book and is a nice introduction to the cloud and what patterns could solve your problems.

[Niklas Nihlén · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was a good flyby of patterns used in cloud native apps.

[Youjiang Wu · Rating 4 out of 5]

High level, introduction to concept.

[Ernestas Poskus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good for introduction nothing more

[Dmitry · Rating 4 out of 5]

average book about cloud, can be read quick and easy

[Yamir Encarnacion · Rating 3 out of 5]

I expected more. Was already familiar with most of the patterns discussed in this book.

[Frank Boucher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice Book great to use it as a reference