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cloud-design-patterns

Cloud design patterns for distributed systems architecture covering 42 industry-standard patterns across reliability, performance, messaging, security, and deployment categories. Use when designing, reviewing, or implementing distributed system architectures.

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Use cloud-design-patterns to recommend an architecture for [system], based on [functional and nonfunctional requirements] and [cloud platform constraints], explaining pattern trade-offs and a rationale for the selected combination.

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  • [system]
  • [functional and nonfunctional requirements]
  • [cloud platform constraints]

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SKILL.md

name: cloud-design-patternsdescription: 'Cloud design patterns for distributed systems architecture covering 42 industry-standard patterns across reliability, performance, messaging, security, and deployment categories. Use when designing, reviewing, or implementing distributed system architectures.'

Cloud Design Patterns

Architects design workloads by integrating platform services, functionality, and code to meet both functional and nonfunctional requirements. To design effective workloads, you must understand these requirements and select topologies and methodologies that address the challenges of your workload's constraints. Cloud design patterns provide solutions to many common challenges.

System design heavily relies on established design patterns. You can design infrastructure, code, and distributed systems by using a combination of these patterns. These patterns are crucial for building reliable, highly secure, cost-optimized, operationally efficient, and high-performing applications in the cloud.

The following cloud design patterns are technology-agnostic, which makes them suitable for any distributed system. You can apply these patterns across Azure, other cloud platforms, on-premises setups, and hybrid environments.

How Cloud Design Patterns Enhance the Design Process

Cloud workloads are vulnerable to the fallacies of distributed computing, which are common but incorrect assumptions about how distributed systems operate. Examples of these fallacies include:

  • The network is reliable.
  • Latency is zero.
  • Bandwidth is infinite.
  • The network is secure.
  • Topology doesn't change.
  • There's one administrator.
  • Component versioning is simple.
  • Observability implementation can be delayed.

These misconceptions can result in flawed workload designs. Design patterns don't eliminate these misconceptions but help raise awareness, provide compensation strategies, and provide mitigations. Each cloud design pattern has trade-offs. Focus on why you should choose a specific pattern instead of how to implement it.

References

ReferenceWhen to load
Reliability & Resilience PatternsAmbassador, Bulkhead, Circuit Breaker, Compensating Transaction, Retry, Health Endpoint Monitoring, Leader Election, Saga, Sequential Convoy
Performance PatternsAsync Request-Reply, Cache-Aside, CQRS, Index Table, Materialized View, Priority Queue, Queue-Based Load Leveling, Rate Limiting, Sharding, Throttling
Messaging & Integration PatternsChoreography, Claim Check, Competing Consumers, Messaging Bridge, Pipes and Filters, Publisher-Subscriber, Scheduler Agent Supervisor
Architecture & Design PatternsAnti-Corruption Layer, Backends for Frontends, Gateway Aggregation/Offloading/Routing, Sidecar, Strangler Fig
Deployment & Operational PatternsCompute Resource Consolidation, Deployment Stamps, External Configuration Store, Geode, Static Content Hosting
Security PatternsFederated Identity, Quarantine, Valet Key
Event-Driven Architecture PatternsEvent Sourcing
Best Practices & Pattern SelectionSelecting appropriate patterns, Well-Architected Framework alignment, documentation, monitoring
Azure Service MappingsCommon Azure services for each pattern category

Pattern Categories at a Glance

CategoryPatternsFocus
Reliability & Resilience9 patternsFault tolerance, self-healing, graceful degradation
Performance10 patternsCaching, scaling, load management, data optimization
Messaging & Integration7 patternsDecoupling, event-driven communication, workflow coordination
Architecture & Design7 patternsSystem boundaries, API gateways, migration strategies
Deployment & Operational5 patternsInfrastructure management, geo-distribution, configuration
Security3 patternsIdentity, access control, content validation
Event-Driven Architecture1 patternEvent sourcing and audit trails

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