Sunday, December 5, 2021

The architectural styles for implementing a cloud service. (Continued)

 

Let’s compare the architectural style described in the previous post with the N-Tier architectural style of building services. This involves many logical layers and physical tiers. It comprises of WebTier, Messaging and Middle-tier and it may or may not involve a FrontEnd. In the closed style, a layer can only call the next layer immediately down and in the open style, a layer can call any of the layers below it.

Some of the benefits of this application include the following: There is portability between cloud and on-premises, and between cloud platforms. There is less learning curve for most developers. There is a natural evolution from the traditional application mode, and it is open to heterogeneous environment (Window/Linux)

Some of the challenges faced with this architectural style include: The middle tier degenerates to a data access layer that just does CRUD operations on the database which introduces unnecessary latency. There is a monolithic design that prevents independent deployment of features. Managing an IaaS application is more work than an application that uses only managed services. It can be difficult to manage network security in a large system.

Some of the best practices faced with this architectural style include changes in load can easily be accomplished by scaling out. Asynchronous messaging can decouple tiers. Semi static data can be cached. The database tier can be configured for high availability, using a solution such as SQL Server which is always on availability groups. It places a web application firewall (WAF) between the front end and the Internet. It places each tier in its own subnet and use subnets as a security boundary. The access is restricted to the data tier.

Some examples include a simple web application, or an application that migrates an on-premises application to Azure with minimal refactoring, and a unified development of on-premises and cloud applications.

Conclusion: Both these styles serve the purpose of a cloud service very well.

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