Cloud Computing Design Patterns

The Prentice Hall Service Technology Series from Thomas Erl

by Thomas Erl, Robert Cope, Amin Naserpour

“This book continues the very high standard we have come to expect from ServiceTech Press. The book provides well-explained vendor-agnostic patterns to the challenges of providing or using cloud solutions from PaaS to SaaS. The book is not only a great patterns reference, but also worth reading from cover to cover as the patterns are thought-provoking, drawing out points that you should consider and ask of a potential vendor if you’re adopting a cloud solution.” -- Phil Wilkins, Enterprise Integration Architect, Specsavers “Thomas Erl’s text provides a unique and comprehensive perspective on cloud design patterns that is clearly and concisely explained for the technical professional and layman alike. It is an informative, knowledgeable, and powerful insight that may guide cloud experts in achieving extraordinary results based on extraordinary expertise identified in this text. I will use this text as a resource in future cloud designs and architectural considerations.” -- Dr. Nancy M. Landreville, CEO/CISO, NML Computer Consulting The Definitive Guide to Cloud Architecture and Design Best-selling service technology author Thomas Erl has brought together the de facto catalog of design patterns for modern cloud-based architecture and solution design. More than two years in development, this book’s 100+ patterns illustrate proven solutions to common cloud challenges and requirements. Its patterns are supported by rich, visual documentation, including 300+ diagrams. The authors address topics covering scalability, elasticity, reliability, resiliency, recovery, data management, storage, virtualization, monitoring, provisioning, administration, and much more. Readers will further find detailed coverage of cloud security, from networking and storage safeguards to identity systems, trust assurance, and auditing. This book’s unprecedented technical depth makes it a must-have resource for every cloud technology architect, solution designer, developer, administrator, and manager. Topic Areas Enabling ubiquitous, on-demand, scalable network access to shared pools of configurable IT resources Optimizing multitenant environments to efficiently serve multiple unpredictable consumers Using elasticity best practices to scale IT resources transparently and automatically Ensuring runtime reliability, operational resiliency, and automated recovery from any failure Establishing resilient cloud architectures that act as pillars for enterprise cloud solutions Rapidly provisioning cloud storage devices, resources, and data with minimal management effort Enabling customers to configure and operate custom virtual networks in SaaS, PaaS, or IaaS environments Efficiently provisioning resources, monitoring runtimes, and handling day-to-day administration Implementing best-practice security controls for cloud service architectures and cloud storage Securing on-premise Internet access, external cloud connections, and scaled VMs Protecting cloud services against denial-of-service attacks and traffic hijacking Establishing cloud authentication gateways, federated cloud authentication, and cloud key management Providing trust attestation services to customers Monitoring and independently auditing cloud security Solving complex cloud design problems with compound super-patterns

Genres: Technical, Design

590 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 10, 2015

Reviews

[Jascha · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the cloud design patterns books I particularly loved is Cloud Architecture Patterns: Using Microsoft Azure. True, this book focused on the services offered by Microsoft and, true, it 'only' described a dozen patterns. But each was very well presented, with diagrams, examples and a very easy to follow, yet detailed, description of the problem and solution. I've been reading that book several times already, and always hoped to find something similar. When Cloud Computing Design Patterns was released I quickly browsed through the pages: hundreds of high quality diagrams. Very promising! High expectations. I had to get this book. After reding it, I must admit I have disappinted.

But let's tell a bit more about it. The book is split into 10 chapters, covering topics such as reliability, storage, monitoring and provisioning. Each chapter presents many patterns. We are literally speaking of a dozen patterns per chapter, really. Each follows a specific pattern: problem, solution, application and mechanism. As stated above, solutions are supported with high quality diagrams. I would really like to highlight the quality of these diagrams. It's really hard to find so many and this good.

Now, why the bad overall rating? Well, each pattern doesn't really go beyond the 20 lines. The problem, as well as the solution, are presented from a very high and abstract point of view. Extremely high. Auto-scaling is simply described as some kind of listener to KPI that manages a pool of resources. I would like to know more. A bit more than this. In fact, I would love to see cloud design patterns applied to the same problem but at a different scale.

Maybe it would have been better to have way less patterns, but with more details.