Cloud Computing Design Patterns

The Prentice Hall Service Technology Series from Thomas Erl

by Thomas Erl

Brand New

Genres: Technical, Design

400 pages, Paperback

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.