Chapter 8: Summary and Industry Scenarios

In this chapter, we will go back through the architectures covered in the book, showing various example scenarios per industry that expand on how the architectural perspectives come together to result in a cohesive solution on Microsoft Azure. The deeper you dive into the industry architectures that most closely resemble your projects, the wiser and more prepared and impactful you become.

This chapter covers the following topics:

• Revisiting our architectures
• Automotive and transportation scenarios
• Banking and financial services scenarios
• Gaming scenarios
• Healthcare scenarios
• Manufacturing scenarios
• Oil and gas scenarios
• Retail scenarios
• The unique values of this book

Revisiting our architectures

First, we'll revisit our architectures by summarizing each chapter of the book. This allows the opportunity to refresh your memory and offer a key appeal from each chapter, one important takeaway that could greatly impact your cloud architectures.

Sample architecture

In Chapter 1, Getting Started as an Azure Architect, we explained the basic idea behind the maps in this book, why we're using them, and how you can use them to further explore architectures. We provided a sample map (see Figure 8.1) to properly explain how the maps are structured:

Figure 8.1 – Our sample map

The sample map demonstrates the subdomains, concerns, options, and alternatives. Our larger-level architecture map focuses on the master domain and subdomains. When we zoomed in, we showed you a fuller map that includes the concerns under a given subdomain. Next, we browsed the different types of architects and showed you what makes...

Automotive and transportation scenarios

Our three automotive and transportation scenarios build off the lessons we covered in Chapter 6, Data Architecture. All three of our architectures are fairly lightweight (what Microsoft currently refers to as solution ideas). They aren't deployable, but they can get your mind spinning down certain architectural paths to better understand your options. (We'll see some deployable architectures in our other verticals.) For our transportation scenarios, we have divided them into one that focuses on AI (predictive insights) and two that focus on analytics (predictive monitoring and IoT analytics).

Predictive insights with vehicle telematics

Our first architecture digs into applying AI to this industry, while our other two architectures take a differently flavored approach toward IoT analytics. For our AI scenario, we're looking to discover predictive insights on the health and driving habits of our vehicle. This impacts car dealerships...

Banking and financial services scenarios

That brings us to the banking and financial services industries! Our first two architectures explore an infrastructure deployment scenario (banking system cloud transformation) and a blockchain scenario that provides on-demand compute (decentralized trust between banks).

Banking system cloud transformation

For our first architecture in this industry, Banking system cloud transformation on Azure, we're looking at a deployment that focuses on aspects of the solution's complete deployment ecosystem, which we first discussed in Chapter 2, Solution Architecture. The bank uses Docker to deliver the microservices containers to the Kubernetes cluster, which should be familiar as we saw a similar example in Chapter 3, Infrastructure Design.

This solution also leverages DevOps lessons learned in Chapter 4, Infrastructure Deployment, including important life cycle considerations, such as load testing and monitoring. It leverages the...

Gaming scenarios

For our gaming architectures, we're launching from our basic data discussions in Chapter 6, Data Architecture. We have three architectures that span two important gaming scenarios. First, we achieve low latency with a LAMP architecture. Then we'll look at two architectures that provide different perspectives (open source and full service) on data architecture for the gaming industry.

Low-latency multiplayer gaming

First, you'll explore the open source LAMP architecture, which stands for a specific stack: a Linux Ubuntu VM (L), Apache web server (A), MySQL (M), and PHP (P). Azure Load Balancer gives the client the IP address from the DNS. The VMs read info from Azure Cache for Redis and read/write to/from Azure Database for MySQL.

More information

This architecture provides robust instructions on calculating the associated costs:

LAMP Gaming Reference Architectures: https://docs.microsoft.com/gaming/azure/reference-architectures/general...

Healthcare scenarios

At the time of writing this book, we've been in lockdowns around the world, as we seek to fight (and survive) the deadly coronavirus. This means that today, healthcare is at the forefront of technology. Thus, Microsoft has plenty of new architectures for you to peruse!

Building a telehealth system on Azure

Our first two focus areas are in containers and storage, which build on our core lessons in Chapter 3, Infrastructure Design. Our container-focused architecture is Building a telehealth system on Azure. This solution provides remote hearing care services! The patient's information is stored in Azure Database for PostgreSQL, and AKS hosts the app's logic and allows optimal deployment. Azure Notification Hub is used to notify the patient of status and contact info, and Azure Functions is used to schedule all tasks.

More information

You'll find a lot of details for this architecture here:

Building a telehealth system on Azure:...

Manufacturing scenarios

Can the cloud help you improve, build, and deliver your product? Absolutely. To understand how, let's explore a few key scenarios. We'll explore infrastructure (using IoT Hub and Azure Blockchain Workbench), industrial IoT analytics, and some important AI manufacturing scenarios.

Supply chain track and trace

For the manufacturing industry, let's start with a blockchain solution that builds on the lessons learned in Chapter 3, Infrastructure Design. Supply Chain Track and Chase provides IoT-enabled monitoring for a supply chain. If you were going to transport refrigerated goods, then you'd likely have compliance rules to follow (and contractual conditions that must be met), such as a temperature and humidity range.

More information

This solution begins in IoT Hub, and heavily leverages Azure Blockchain Workbench:

Supply Chain Track and Trace: https://docs.microsoft.com/azure/architecture/solution-ideas/articles/supply-chain...

Oil and gas scenarios

For our oil and gas architectures, we've got a nice variety that spans HPC, analytics, and IoT-focused scenarios. First, let's unravel the challenge of computing 3D modeling and seismic data.

Run reservoir simulation software on Azure

Our first scenario focuses heavily on HPC, which ties into what we learned in Chapter 3, Infrastructure Design. This architecture, Run reservoir simulation software on Azure, allows you to compute 3D reservoir modeling and visualize seismic data! This includes a sample INTERSECT simulation from Microsoft customer Schlumberger. The HB-series of high-performance VMs are deployed as a VMSS, which are multiple, identical VMs that are able to scale and complete high-performance compute tasks. Azure CycleCloud operates, manages, schedules, and deploys the big compute clusters.

More information

You can deploy this architecture using the example implementation:

Run reservoir simulation software on Azure: https:/...

Retail scenarios

Finally, we'll explore a robust library of architectures in the sister industry to manufacturing: retail. We'll start by browsing architectures that map back to Chapter 6, Data Architecture.

Retail and e-commerce Azure database architectures

First, let's browse some architectures that focus on database usage. All three scenarios are run through a browser that's built on Azure App Service (Web Apps). The logs and static catalog content are kept in Azure Storage. Then we have the main difference, whether the data catalog is organized in Azure Database for MySQL, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, or Azure Cosmos DB.

More information

You can browse the three options here:

Retail and e-commerce using Azure MySQL: https://docs.microsoft.com/azure/architecture/solution-ideas/articles/retail-and-ecommerce-using-azure-database-for-mysql

Retail and e-commerce using Azure PostgreSQL: https://docs.microsoft.com/azure/architecture/solution-ideas...

The unique values of this book

The truth is that there are many other books about architecting cloud solutions. You'll also find a lot of online articles on the subject (as further shown by the architecture solutions we have listed in this chapter). However, in this book, Stephane has brought to life his unique map-based approach to exploring and learning Azure architectures. Based on our success in community and the community's response to his architectures, we believe this unique approach helps bring the architectures to life.

When we first put this book together, we thought of a few unique qualities that we think make this book stand out. Although you've read the book, understanding these qualities might help refresh your memory, as you refer back to certain chapters and sections in the book. Likewise, you could spend a good amount of time browsing and reviewing the online resources and the map/diagram files that we have for you. Thus, as you continue to leverage...

Summary

Through the course of this book, you gained a high-level view of what common patterns of architectures might look like. Hopefully, while reading The Azure Cloud-Native Architecture Mapbook, you thought of scenarios such as those in this chapter, an actual architecture that meets your business needs (or at least an applicable sample). Even if you're a seasoned architect, we suspect that you gained new perspectives on how to architect your solutions (and perhaps you picked up a few tips and tricks). Ultimately, we hope that you observed how you can strengthen your organizational weaknesses, bringing new values to your companies, customers, and/or clients.

In summary, you gained an overall architectural knowledge (or review) of the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. You dug deeper into the possibilities of building a full Azure solution, learned best practices for designing and deploying an Azure infrastructure, and reviewed patterns and possibilities for building a complete...

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