From the course: Building a Cloud Architecture Diagram
What is a cloud architecture diagram?
From the course: Building a Cloud Architecture Diagram
What is a cloud architecture diagram?
- [Instructor] All right, what is a cloud architect diagram and why should you care? Well, a cloud architecture diagram is a visual representation of the components and relationships in a cloud computing system. This will typically include elements such as the cloud services such as storage, networking, and security. The cloud architecture diagram will show how these components fit together and interact, creating a complete cloud-based application or workload. After they're created, they can be pretty handy to help improve the overall design and identify potential bottleneck or areas for optimization in the current cloud workload. Now when I use the term workload or project, I'm defining an application hosted in the cloud and all of the associated cloud services that are bundled together running as a two, three, or multi-tier application. So workload or project is defining this sort of entity. Now in regards to understanding design decisions, the cloud architecture diagram provides a visual representation of all the components and the relationships, helping you to understand and communicate your architecture. An example could be you're creating a use case that describes how the end user interfaces or connects with a system or application, or maybe you're using something called a class diagram which details how a software application is designed. Or maybe the most common scenario that you'll see is an architecture diagram that actually shows the cloud architecture components say from Amazon, Google, Azure. These diagrams help you improve your design because once you see it visually, you'll see potential areas where you can improve. After all, there'll more than just your eyes looking at this document. By visualizing the components and relationships with a diagram even for some architecture that hasn't yet been created, it's much easier to identify areas where changes or improvements could be made, and you're going to have a lot better collaboration between technical and non-technical audiences. The different stakeholders or third-party people that are working with you on this project will have different levels of technical knowledge and you'll find these diagrams can be really useful in laying out what you're trying to do. All right, so when do I create these diagrams? Well, when you first start off designing a new cloud workload, that might be a good starting point. The architecture diagram can be used to represent the design of what you're going to build and people can understand visually where you're going. Perhaps you already have an existing cloud workload and you want to make some changes. Maybe documenting what you have helps you be able to represent the changes that are going to be made. This can be really helpful to understand the impact of the proposed or finalized changes and to make sure the project is kind of on track. When documenting an existing cloud computing workload, the cloud architecture diagram can be really useful in documenting the current architecture. It's going to be really helpful for understanding the overall scope of the workload or project and in the future when undoubtedly questions or issues will occur, that visual reference point is really helpful for looking at the changes or updates that may have to be undertaken. This documentation that we're creating can also be defined as operational excellence. Operational excellence is designing a workload that is working the way you want in production and then maintaining that workload. Overall operational excellence can be defined as the practice that is adopted by the organization of continuously improving the efficiency, the effectiveness, and the agility of each cloud-hosted workload. In order to achieve operational excellence, you first have to identify and implement best practices and processes. Well, if you can't visually see what you're doing, how are you going to move towards operational excellence, documentation is key. That big three public cloud providers, that's Amazon, Azure, and Google, have well-defined, well-architected frameworks that will help guide organizations in successfully deploying their cloud-hosted workloads or projects. The well-architected framework is designed in pillars and these pillars include reliability, security, performance, and costs, and operational excellence. Now each of these pillars will most likely have several separate cloud architect diagrams from a very technical deep dive to technical overviews depending on the audience. The goal of creating cloud architecture diagrams is to represent the design and structure of what you have running in the cloud, the workload or project, in a way that is accurate, easy to understand, and provides a comprehensive view of the architecture. It should visually communicate the design of the system to stakeholders or team members. Perhaps the team members are technical. Perhaps they're very non-technical. Maybe they're not familiar with the technical aspects of the system at all. Maybe they're just coming on board. Maybe it's members of the executive team and the information has to be presented in a less technical manner. One of the goals once you finished your cloud architect diagram is to identify the improvements that should be undertaken. How do I optimize my system? Oh, there's a bottleneck. I didn't think of it this way until I looked at it graphically. A cloud architect diagram, if it's doing its job, will identify opportunities for improvement and optimization and enhance the performance of the workload, and it gives you a great reference point for maintenance or updates that need to be carried out. Other benefits for designing and creating cloud architecture diagrams include the ability to troubleshoot, understanding what's going on. That visual representation will save a lot of time. As mentioned, giving us a reference point for maintenance and updates that need to be undertaken, and it also can demonstrate the governance and compliance that your organization may have to follow. Once you look at the diagram of your workload, you'll be able to identify potential compliance risks such as areas where data may be vulnerable or maybe there's gaps in the security controls.
Contents
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What is a cloud architecture diagram?6m 56s
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Enterprise architecture diagrams1m 50s
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UML examples for AI systems5m 24s
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Business architecture diagrams3m 16s
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Application architecture diagrams3m 10s
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Data architecture diagrams2m 56s
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Technology architecture diagrams3m 25s
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Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams2m 15s
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UML use case diagram overview1m 41s
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UML component diagram overview1m 53s
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UML deployment diagram overview1m 46s
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UML sequence diagram overview1m 43s
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UML state diagram overview1m 29s
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UML activity diagram overview1m 23s
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UML class diagram overview2m 14s
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Organizational responsibilities5m 16s
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