Cloud Architect

Core Workflow

1. Discovery — Assess current state, requirements, constraints, compliance needs
2. Design — Select services, design topology, plan data architecture
3. Security — Implement zero-trust, identity federation, encryption
4. Cost Model — Right-size resources, reserved capacity, auto-scaling
5. Migration — Apply 6Rs framework, define waves, validate connectivity before cutover
6. Operate — Set up monitoring, automation, continuous optimization

Workflow Validation Checkpoints

After Design: Confirm every component has a redundancy strategy and no single points of failure exist in the topology.

Before Migration cutover: Validate VPC peering or connectivity is fully established:

# AWS: confirm peering connection is Active before proceeding
aws ec2 describe-vpc-peering-connections \
  --filters "Name=status-code,Values=active"

# Azure: confirm VNet peering state
az network vnet peering list \
  --resource-group myRG --vnet-name myVNet \
  --query "[].{Name:name,State:peeringState}"

After Migration: Verify application health and routing:

# AWS: check target group health in ALB
aws elbv2 describe-target-health \
  --target-group-arn arn:aws:elasticloadbalancing:...

After DR test: Confirm RTO/RPO targets were met; document actual recovery times.

Reference Guide

Load detailed guidance based on context:

| Topic | Reference | Load When | |-------|-----------|-----------| | AWS Services | references/aws.md | EC2, S3, Lambda, RDS, Well-Architected Framework | | Azure Services | references/azure.md | VMs, Storage, Functions, SQL, Cloud Adoption Framework | | GCP Services | references/gcp.md | Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, Cloud Functions, BigQuery | | Multi-Cloud | references/multi-cloud.md | Abstraction layers, portability, vendor lock-in mitigation | | Cost Optimization | references/cost.md | Reserved instances, spot, right-sizing, FinOps practices |

Constraints

MUST DO

• Design for high availability (99.9%+)
• Implement security by design (zero-trust)
• Use infrastructure as code (Terraform, CloudFormation)
• Enable cost allocation tags and monitoring
• Plan disaster recovery with defined RTO/RPO
• Implement multi-region for critical workloads
• Use managed services when possible
• Document architectural decisions

MUST NOT DO

• Store credentials in code or public repos
• Skip encryption (at rest and in transit)
• Create single points of failure
• Ignore cost optimization opportunities
• Deploy without proper monitoring
• Use overly complex architectures
• Ignore compliance requirements
• Skip disaster recovery testing

Common Patterns with Examples

Least-Privilege IAM (Zero-Trust)

Rather than broad policies, scope permissions to specific resources and actions:

# AWS: create a scoped role for an application
aws iam create-role \
  --role-name AppRole \
  --assume-role-policy-document file://trust-policy.json

aws iam put-role-policy \
  --role-name AppRole \
  --policy-name AppInlinePolicy \
  --policy-document '{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [{
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["s3:GetObject", "s3:PutObject"],
      "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::my-app-bucket/*"
    }]
  }'

# Terraform equivalent
resource "aws_iam_role" "app_role" {
  name               = "AppRole"
  assume_role_policy = data.aws_iam_policy_document.trust.json
}

resource "aws_iam_role_policy" "app_policy" {
  role = aws_iam_role.app_role.id
  policy = jsonencode({
    Version = "2012-10-17"
    Statement = [{
      Effect   = "Allow"
      Action   = ["s3:GetObject", "s3:PutObject"]
      Resource = "${aws_s3_bucket.app.arn}/*"
    }]
  })
}

VPC with Public/Private Subnets (Terraform)

resource "aws_vpc" "main" {
  cidr_block           = "10.0.0.0/16"
  enable_dns_hostnames = true
  tags = { Name = "main", CostCenter = var.cost_center }
}

resource "aws_subnet" "private" {
  count             = 2
  vpc_id            = aws_vpc.main.id
  cidr_block        = cidrsubnet("10.0.0.0/16", 8, count.index)
  availability_zone = data.aws_availability_zones.available.names[count.index]
}

resource "aws_subnet" "public" {
  count                   = 2
  vpc_id                  = aws_vpc.main.id
  cidr_block              = cidrsubnet("10.0.0.0/16", 8, count.index + 10)
  availability_zone       = data.aws_availability_zones.available.names[count.index]
  map_public_ip_on_launch = true
}

Auto-Scaling Group (Terraform)

resource "aws_autoscaling_group" "app" {
  desired_capacity    = 2
  min_size            = 1
  max_size            = 10
  vpc_zone_identifier = aws_subnet.private[*].id

  launch_template {
    id      = aws_launch_template.app.id
    version = "$Latest"
  }

  tag {
    key                 = "CostCenter"
    value               = var.cost_center
    propagate_at_launch = true
  }
}

resource "aws_autoscaling_policy" "cpu_target" {