What Is Cloud Architecture?

Every enterprise has its own cloud computing goals, whether to deploy cloud-native software and AI applications, optimize IT operations and data, or dynamically scale infrastructure to meet fluctuating resource demands. Cloud architecture allows organizations to build a cloud that aligns with unique business goals.

Cloud architecture refers to the design and schematics of the underlying infrastructure and components that support cloud computing. These designs will vary, depending on an enterprise’s objectives and infrastructure requirements. By designing a plan for how various elements work in tandem, enterprises can achieve scale, reliability, and efficiency. But to do so, cloud architecture design must account for unique workload, user, and operational cost requirements.

Principles of Cloud Architecture

When designing a cloud architecture, it is important to evaluate the state of the current environment and how well it supports present and future business needs. Here are some factors to consider during the evaluation process:

• Workload requirements: Conduct an audit of the current workloads and applications and where they are running, whether that’s in the cloud or on-premises. Factors, including performance needs, control, compliance, and cost, should inform decisions about optimal placement. On-premises infrastructure may need to be modernized to support optimal cloud architecture design.
• Cloud use: Audit overall cloud use and associated costs. Architecture designed for peak loads can result in low use and overprovisioned resources. Scaling resources to support workload spikes can help manage resources and costs.
• Infrastructure bottlenecks: Monitor key performance metrics for compute performance, storage, or networking performance to check if bottlenecks are negatively impacting the environment.
• Virtualization: Consider if applications should be deployed in virtual machines or containers. Legacy workloads and monolithic applications often need to run in virtual machines (VMs). Applications that require portability, consistency across environments, rapid scaling, or need to make use of cloud-native practices are good candidates for containers.
• Resiliency: Assess the impact of downtime on operations. Itemize the critical applications, data, and infrastructure that need to be backed up or duplicated to minimize downtime in the event of a service outage.
   

Organizations often engage with consultants to conduct thorough architectural evaluations at the outset of the project and during key implementation phases. Cloud architects, systems integrators, and managed service providers can help determine the best architecture design, infrastructure components, and cloud platforms to use.

Cloud Infrastructure vs. Cloud Architecture

Cloud infrastructure consists of all the elements—including hardware, software, virtualization, and networking components—that are involved in delivering cloud resources to the consumer. Cloud architecture, meanwhile, refers to the blueprint or plan for how these elements and resources are structured to support a cloud computing environment. It’s a subtle but important distinction, as the right cloud architecture design enables cloud infrastructure to be used optimally by ensuring resource scalability, reliability, and efficiency.

Benefits of Cloud Architecture

Having an architectural plan in place allows enterprises to get the most out of cloud computing. The benefits include:
 

• Scalability: Cloud architecture provides support for fluctuating workloads, giving businesses access to the scalable resources they need when they need them while helping to prevent under- or overprovisioning.
• Availability: The right architecture can help keep critical business workloads and applications up and running in the event of an outage by duplicating critical applications, data, and infrastructure across multiple data centers.
• Security: Hybrid architecture design allows enterprises to divide workloads between public and private cloud infrastructure. Workloads involving sensitive data can be kept on-premises, helping to keep confidential data private, while nonsensitive data and workloads can use public cloud resources, storage, and services.
• Performance: Cloud architecture can help optimize performance by leveraging scalable design, optimal data storage and caching, and rightsized resource provisioning, allowing organizations to maximize investments and resource use.

Cloud Architecture Components

Cloud architectures comprise various components, computing layers, and infrastructure pieces.

Front-End vs. Back-End Components

There are two sides to a cloud environment. The front end is visible to the end user—in other words, the user interface for interacting with the platform. The back end encompasses all the components and infrastructure in public and private data centers that power the cloud. It consists of data center servers, cloud hardware, virtualization technologies—including hypervisors and virtual machines—applications, and services. The front end communicates with the back end through middleware.

Cloud Architecture Layers

Cloud architecture can be thought of in terms of layers, including:

• Hardware layer: The bottom layer contains physical hardware and infrastructure in the data center, including servers, storage, and networking.
• Virtualization layer: The middle layer contains technologies that virtualize the underlying resources. By abstracting resources away from the physical hardware, the virtualization layer enables optimal resource use across multiple servers.
• Application and service layer: The top layer contains the tools and control panels for interfacing with virtualized infrastructure. It coordinates requests from the front-end user interface to the back-end resources.

Cloud Infrastructure Components

Cloud architecture strategically combines various infrastructure pieces into an optimized system. These components include:
 

• Server processors: Data center processors, including CPUs, GPUs, and FPGAs, are designed to accelerate cloud computing workloads, including virtualization and containers, analytics, and AI.They are often chosen based on cost efficiency, scalability, and suitability for the workload. The right choice depends on the application. For example, FPGAs are especially helpful for deep learning applications.
• Storage: Various storage options are available for cloud environments, depending on workload specifications. A cloud storage strategy takes into account the ease of access to data, the speed of access, and the scalability of data.
• Networking: Cloud architecture uses physical and virtual networking to ensure fast and fluid data delivery across the environment. Equipment is typically evaluated based on metrics like compatibility, throughput (which affects scalability), latency (which affects responsiveness), reliability (which helps prevent downtime), and network security.
• Management and monitoring: Cloud management platforms and tools help administrators observe and manage resource use, costs, and compliance throughout the cloud environment. Some are designed to enable automation and orchestration techniques, which can streamline repetitive administrative tasks.

Types of Cloud Architecture

There’s no such thing as one-size-fits-all cloud architecture. By choosing the ideal cloud deployment models for business needs, enterprises can optimize their workloads, data, and development workflows.

Serverless Architecture

Serverless computing is a cloud software architecture that accelerates application development by allowing developers to focus on building applications rather than managing infrastructure. It operates on a pay-as-you-go model and is offered as a service from cloud providers who handle nearly every aspect of resource management.

Microservices Architecture

Microservices are a modular architecture tailored to software applications, including web applications, software, and back-end systems. They improve the responsiveness of web applications by making them more resilient and allowing various services within the application to scale independently, helping to improve efficiency. They also simplify application development by giving development teams flexibility and fault isolation, helping to speed time to market.

Public Cloud Architecture

In a public cloud model, cloud services are rented from a cloud service provider. They have a pay-as-you-go pricing structure, giving businesses quick access to resources when needed. Public clouds are suitable for short-term and ad hoc workloads but can be susceptible to cost overruns if not carefully managed.

Private Cloud Architecture

A private cloud model requires organizations to own and maintain their cloud infrastructure. Some workloads—including mission-critical applications and legacy applications that are difficult to migrate—are better suited for such environments.

Hybrid Cloud Architecture

A hybrid cloud model uses resources from a mixture of public and private cloud environments. It allows businesses to improve performance and efficiency by placing workloads in the optimal location.

Multicloud Architecture

Multicloud models use resources from multiple public cloud services, helping to avoid vendor lock-in, improve resiliency, and diversify an organization’s geographic footprint.

The Future of Cloud Architecture

Future-proofing investment is a crucial aspect of designing a cloud architecture. Many organizations are shifting to a hybrid multicloud architecture for that very reason. A viable hybrid multicloud strategy gives enterprises the agility to adjust their cloud strategy should business goals or market conditions change. By integrating public cloud resources and private cloud infrastructure, enterprises unlock the full potential of hybrid multicloud architecture for today and tomorrow.