Creating the architecture artifacts

The hierarchy in documents that cover the architecture starts with the enterprise architecture. It's the first so-called architecture artifact. The enterprise architecture is followed by the high-level design and the low-level design, which covers the various components in the IT landscape. We will explore this in more detail in the following sections. Keep in mind that these sections are merely an introduction to the creation of these artifacts. You will find samples of these artifacts at https://publications.opengroup.org/i093, where you can download a ZIP file containing relevant templates.

Creating a business vision

Creating a business vision can take years, but it's still a crucial artifact in the architecture. It sets out what the business wants to achieve. This should be a long-term outlook since it will drive architectural decisions. Though cloud environments enable the agile deployment of services, it should never become...

Change management and validation as the cornerstone

We are working under architecture from this point onward. This implies that the changes that are made to the systems in our environment are controlled from the architecture. Sometimes, these changes have an impact on the architecture itself, where we will need to change the architecture. In multi-cloud environments, that will actually happen a lot.

Cloud platforms are flexible in terms of use and thus our architecture can't be set in stone: it needs to allow improvements to be made to the environments that we have designed, thereby enabling that these improvements are documented and embedded in the architecture. Improvements can be a result of fixing a problem or mitigating an issue to enhancements. Either way, we have to make sure that changes that are the result of these improvements can be validated, tracked, and traced. Change management is therefore crucial in maintaining the architecture.

Since we have already learned...

Validating the architecture

You might recognize this from the process where we validate the architecture of software. It is very common to have an architecture validation in software development, but any architecture should be validated. But what do we mean by that and what would be the objective? The first and most important objective is quality control. The second objective is that improvements that need to be made to the architecture need to be considered. This is done to guarantee that we have an architecture that meets our business goals, addresses all the principles and requirements, and that it can be received for continuous improvement.

Validating the architecture is not an audit. Therefore, it is perfectly fine to have the first validation procedure be done through a peer review: architects and engineers that haven't been involved in creating the architecture. It is also recommended to have an external review of your cloud architecture. This can be done by cloud solutions...

Summary

In the cloud, it's very easy to get started straight away, but that's not a sustainable way of working for enterprises. In this chapter, we've learned that, in multi-cloud, we have to work according to a well-thought and designed architecture. This starts with creating an architecture vision and setting principles for the different domains such as data, applications, and the underlying infrastructure. Quality attributes are a great help in setting up the architecture.

With these quality attributes, we have explored topics that make architecture for cloud environments very specific in terms of availability, scalability, discoverability, configurability, and operability. If we have designed the architecture, we have to manage it. If we work under the architecture, we need to be strict in terms of change management. Finally, it's good practice to have our architectural work validated by peers and experts from different providers.

With this, we have learned how...

Questions

1. Name at least four quality attributes that are discussed in this chapter.
2. What would be the first artifact in creating the architecture?
3. True or false: There are two types of changes – standard and non-standard changes.

Further reading

• The official page of The Open Group Architecture Framework: https://www.opengroup.org/togaf.
• Enterprise Architecture Planning, by Steven Spewak, John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Questions

1. A basic infrastructure in the cloud consists of five major domains, three of which are network, compute, and storage. What are the other two domains?
2. What solution does Azure offer to provide scaling of landing zones?
3. AWS offers a service that enables the central management of guardrails for resources. What’s the name of this service?
4. What does RAM stand for in Alibaba Cloud?

Further reading

• Azure for Architects, by Ritesh Modi, Packt Publishing
• Architecting Cloud Computing Solutions, by Kevin L. Jackson, Packt Publishing