Goal of this series

The goal is simple. I see a lot of misconceptions when talking about cloud concepts. Not only with people that are new to the cloud but also with people that have years of experience.

Many people approach cloud as “just another data-center” with virtual machines. This is a very expensive and maintenance heavy way of working.

Just another data-center

If enough interest arises from this series I would like to continue sharing these insights during conferences and cups of coffees.

Target audience

The target audience of this series is anyone interested in what cloud is. From a single developer to technical managers within an enterprise.

Not all posts will be of interest for everyone but in general you will probably get a lot of new insights.

You will need to have a decent technical level to follow everything. this series will not go into extreme cloud processing or very complex solutions. The examples will be simple to just explain the concepts behind.

Technology used

Cloud provider

During the series I will use concepts of AWS. This has multiple reasons:

• Everything I do will stay within the AWS always free tier
• AWS has more distinct services which make it easier to explain.

Even though the examples are for AWS most concepts will be similar for (for instance) Azure.

Deployment through infrastructure as code

Especially in the serverless world we will be creating many resources. This means orchestration and this is not done in the portal. Therefor everything with actual resources involved will be backed by an AWS CDK Application. One of the topics in this series will go into the depths of using AWS CDK to get a better understanding.

Programming language

During the series I will add some code snippets. To keep everything in the same language I will use typescript.

Topics

I will continue adding topics until I think this series is finished.

Currently finished

Welcome to the cloud, now drop your virtual machines!

This post focusses around virtual machines and why I think you should not use them anymore.

A not so well designed serverless cloud application

The start design of implementing something in the cloud using most classic techniques. This is also a way to show that getting there is definitely not always the right way of doing things.

The serverless talk

Going a bit into the depths of serverless and how you should look at it

Coming soon

I’m working on a set of blogs already. These probably will shift a bit but in general this is the plan:

That “function in the cloud”

Talking about Lambda, common practices, costs and (event driven) microservices.

IaC: Stop clicking in that portal!

Talking about Infra as Code and AWS CDK

”A penny saved is a penny earned”

How to work with cloud and keep your bill (very) low. Or, how I normally approach any cloud service before actually using it in both development and production.

Lets build a cloud app

This will be a decent application. Actually probably just a todo list. It will not be streamlined to server millions of customers although it can handle it.

Terminologies/Abbreviations

Term/Abreviation	Description
Iac	Infrastructure As Code Basically we create a (definition) file for the whole cloud application which can be stored in i.e. git.
D&R test	Disaster & Recovery testing Sometimes also combined with Doomsday recovery . This is a way to
CDK	Cloud Development Kit Next level of IaC. Create your cloud application in a programming language