How to build an app in the cloud?

Edition 2024

 

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

App? Seriosly?

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

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 ...

  • MSSQL, MySQL, MariaDB and Postgres
  • Pricing:
    • DTU versus vCore (Pricing)
    • Single Server vs. Flexible vs. Hyperscale (Pricing
  • Dynamic scaling? Yes, but ...

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 deploy will be like dance.

Generating perfect image....

Help! Aider! Hilfe! Pomocy!

How to become an architect in the cloud?

By Piotr Stapp

How to become an architect in the cloud?

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