Cloud Computing Solution Patterns: Infrastructural Solutions

Abstract

Cloud computing is an important emerging paradigm that is affecting the way enterprise IT is being managed. Cloud computing offers several useful features like high scalability, agility through elasticity, on-demand self-service, and pay-per-use models when consuming and delivering IT capabilities. There are several scenarios in enterprise IT context where solution architecture approaches leveraging cloud computing technologies offer a better solution than established traditional options. However, the architectural design and deployment approaches for the emerging solutions based on cloud computing paradigm are different from traditional approaches, so there is a need for a new set of solution architectural patterns and best practices. There are infrastructural layer solution patterns and application layer solution patterns addressing concerns at the corresponding layers. The infrastructure layer solution patterns deal with concerns like how to architect compute infrastructure that deals with unpredictable workloads while keeping the costs down and how to architect storage infrastructure that handles storage of large volumes of data. This chapter describes a number of common infrastructure layer scenarios and use cases, the limitations of traditional solutions, and the cloud computing-based infrastructural solution patterns that a software architect can leverage.