How to build an app in the cloud?
Edition 2025
How to join?
Use the phone, Luke!
Piotr Stapp
- Unique name - just sing a song: "Don't Stapp me know" ;)
- SAFe System Principal Architect @ Demant Technology Center
- ex - Senior software/DevOps/Architect @mBank/@FinAi/@Allegro
- Own company (small consulting + workshops)
- M.Sc (distction) Oxford Brooks University in Web Tech
- M.Sc. Warsaw University of Technology in Computer Science
Attention
All opinions are my own
and
do not necessarily reflect
the views of any companies.
Context
Agile -> Scrum -> SAFe
Vide coding
Vibe coding is a modern approach to software development where programmers use natural language to describe problems or tasks to AI tools, which then generate the necessary code. This method relies heavily on large language models (LLMs) tuned for coding, such as those used in tools like GitHub Copilot and Cursor
Vibe architecture
Vibe architecture is a conceptual approach to designing software systems where the architecture is described in natural language, and AI tools generate the architectural components and their interactions. This method leverages large language models (LLMs) to translate high-level descriptions into detailed architectural designs
by Piotr Stapp
Internal Developer Platform
Benefits:
- Platforms are designed to achieve scale and reduce time-to-value.
- They eliminate toil by offering DevEx and simplified operations.
- Key components include self-sufficiency tools, common task assistance, reusable building blocks, and early feedback on problems or security risks.
Basic
Pick your favorite cloud
Version control
CI/CD
Did you include?
Our contract
- In this presentation money are not important
- In real life they are
Resources
The incomplete list
Containers
- Azure Container Instances
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
- Azure Container Apps
- Azure Web App with containers or not
- Virtual machines + custom scripts (e.g. docker-compose up)
- Virtual machines + "cluster management" (e.g. Rancher, Kubermatic, ... )
No containers
- Not today - sorry :)
Upfront + static costs
Containers
- Azure Container Instances
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
- Azure Container Apps
- Azure Web Apps with containers or not
- Virtual machines + custom scripts (e.g. docker-compose up)
- Virtual machines + "cluster management" (e.g. Rancher, Kubermatic, ... )
Easy to scale up
Containers
- Azure Container Instances
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) ***
- Azure Container Apps
- Azure Web Apps
- Virtual machines + custom scripts
- Virtual machines + "cluster management"
Easy to scale down
Containers
- Azure Container Instances
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) ***
- Azure Container Apps
- Azure Web Apps
- Virtual machines + custom scripts
- Virtual machines + "cluster management" ***
DevEx
Containers
- Azure Container Instances
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) ***
- Azure Container Apps
- Azure Web Apps
- Virtual machines + custom scripts
- Virtual machines + "cluster management" ***
Voting on hosting
Data
Small recap
- We build a platform - different systems may have different needs
- Still we need to give "something" with:
- integrated networking
- HAA
- support
- etc.
NoSQL
- Great, isn't it?
- New, isn't it?
SQL
- Solid, isn't it?
- Well known, isn't it?
Options
- Self-hosted "custom" one on VM's
- Azure Storage
- Cosmos DB
- "Native"
- Mongo
- GraphQL
- Postgres on Cosmos
- ....
- SQL as a Service
- MSSQL
- Postgres
- MySQL
- MariaDB
Custom stuff on VM's
Before you decide, you should know
- why PaaS DB won't work for you
- how to manage this custom stuff
Azure Storage
- Very cheap
- Simple key-value or "file database"
- Limit for maximum number of operations
- Used by https://haveibeenpwned.com/
In other words, if I want 100GB of storage and I want to hit it 10 million times, it’ll cost me $8 a month.
Azure SQL for ...
Cosmos DB
- "SQL", API for MongoDB, Gremlin, Cassandra, Table, ...
- Key-vaule, Column-Family, Documents, Graph
- Pricing:
- Standard
- Auto-scale
- Serverless
- Dynamic scaling? Yes!!
- Postgres on board? Yes!!!
What about ...
- DB2🙈 (check: IBM DB2 Azure Virtual Machines DBMS)
- Oracle 🙉 (check: Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure)
- Redis🙊 (check: Azure Cache for Redis)
- ....
GeeCON 2023: Wojtek Ptak
Hypergrowth scaling made simple
Options
- Self-hosted "custom" one on VM's
- Azure Storage
- Cosmos DB
- SQL as a Service
- Postgres
Voting
Services
or queues?
Let's zoom it
ActiveMQ vs Service Bus
RabbitMQ vs AMPQ
- AMQP 1.0 (used by Service Bus) is a completely different protocol than AMQP 0-9-1 (used by RabbitMQ)
- Rabbit implements AMQP 1.0 via a plugin
Kafka vs Event Hub
To queue or not to queue?
Monitoring & logging
Let's zoom it
What about Azure?
And more
The (in)complete list
- Application Insights
- Azure Monitor ++
- Grafana / Azure Managed Grafana
- Prometheus / Azure Monitor Managed Service for Prometheus
- Self-hosted ELK
- ....
I want to use
User Data Storage
accounts and passwords
Old days
Receipe
- Take one technology that you <3
- Apply the first tutorial about user accounts
- Or copy some stuff from previous project
My case
- .NET Framework (a good one)
- Avoided problems:
- Passwords with base64
- SQL injection
- In PHP, NodeJS, Java, .... - situation is simmilar
Seriously!
Today
The incomplete list
- Dedicated tools for user management:
- Active Directory
- OpenLDAP
- ...
- Ready to deploy and use:
- Keycloak,
- Identity Server 4
- ...
- SaaS:
- Auth0
- Userbase
- Azure B2C
Candidates
"Self-hosted"
- My own with NuGet / Maven / NPM / pip / ... support
- Active Directory / OpenLDAP / ...
- Keycloak / Identity Server 4 / ...
SaaS
- SaaS outside Azure: Auth0
- "SaaS" inside Azure: Azure B2C
- Totally "unknow" SaaS: Userbase
SaaS Features
- Facebook / Twitter / Github / .... login
- MFA with application and SMS
- FIDO2
- Custom domain
- Custom CSS
- ....
Money
"Have I Been Pwned"?
The end?
Our amazing IDP!
State
- We know how to store code
- We know how to host our app
- We know how to deploy it
- We know how to monitor it
- We know how to store data
- We know how to manage users
- We know ....
Are we ready to deploy?
Generate image representing our deployment using AI
Your IDP will be like slum dunk in NBA
Generating perfect image....
Help! Aider! Hilfe! Pomocy!
How to become an architect in the cloud?
By Piotr Stapp
