Skip to main content

Best Practices: Architecture Design

CloudNOOE helps you build well-architected systems by embedding best practices directly into its workflow. However, understanding the principles behind a good architecture will help you make better decisions and get the most out of the platform.

This guide covers key best practices for designing secure, scalable, resilient, and cost-effective cloud infrastructure, based on the AWS Well-Architected Framework.

1. Security: Protect Your Infrastructure and Data​

Security is job zero. CloudNOOE's AI Assistant is designed to create secure configurations by default, but it's crucial to understand the core principles.

  • Implement a Strong Identity Foundation: Use IAM (Identity and Access Management) to control who can access your resources. Follow the principle of least privilege—grant only the permissions required to perform a task.
  • Apply Security at All Layers: Don't rely on a single line of defense. Use a combination of Security Groups (stateful firewalls for instances) and Network Access Control Lists (stateless firewalls for subnets) to control traffic.
  • Keep People Away from Data: Place your databases and application servers in private subnets, inaccessible from the public internet. Use a bastion host or Systems Manager for administrative access when needed.
  • Enable Encryption: Encrypt data at rest (e.g., on EBS volumes and S3 buckets) and in transit (using TLS).

Pro Tip in CloudNOOE: When the AI creates an architecture, click on the Security Groups it generates. Review the inbound and outbound rules to ensure they align with the principle of least privilege. For example, a database security group should only allow inbound traffic from the application server security group, not from the open internet (0.0.0.0/0).

2. Reliability: Design for Failure​

In the cloud, you should assume that components can and will fail. A resilient architecture is one that can automatically recover from failure.

  • Design for High Availability: Avoid single points of failure. Deploy your application across multiple Availability Zones (AZs). CloudNOOE's AI will often do this by default when you ask for a "highly available" or "production" environment.
  • Use Managed Services: Offload responsibility to AWS wherever possible. Using a managed service like RDS (Relational Database Service) is more reliable than managing your own database on an EC2 instance because AWS handles backups, patching, and failover.
  • Implement Auto Scaling: Use Auto Scaling groups to automatically adjust the number of instances in response to traffic. This ensures you have enough capacity to handle load spikes and can recover from the failure of an individual instance.

3. Performance Efficiency: Use Resources Wisely​

A performant architecture uses computing resources efficiently to meet system requirements and maintains that efficiency as demand changes.

  • Choose the Right Tool for the Job: Select the right instance type, storage class, and database engine for your workload. Use the Real-Time Cost Estimator in CloudNOOE to compare the performance and cost of different options.
  • Go Serverless When Possible: For event-driven or intermittent workloads, consider a serverless approach with AWS Lambda. This eliminates the need to manage servers and you only pay for the compute time you consume.
  • Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN): Use Amazon CloudFront to cache content closer to your users, reducing latency and offloading traffic from your origin servers.

4. Cost Optimization: Avoid Unnecessary Spend​

Cost optimization is a continuous process of refinement and improvement. CloudNOOE's real-time cost feedback is your most powerful tool in this area.

  • Right-Size Your Resources: Don't overprovision. Start with a smaller instance size and scale up if necessary. Use the cost estimator to see the impact of rightsizing.
  • Leverage Different Pricing Models: For steady-state workloads, consider purchasing Reserved Instances or Savings Plans. For stateless, fault-tolerant workloads, use Spot Instances to achieve savings of up to 90%.
  • Turn Off What You Don't Need: Shut down development and testing environments outside of work hours. While CloudNOOE focuses on design, this is a critical operational practice.

Next Steps​