Cloud Architecture Foundations

What you will be able to do

• You will be able to translate business and functional requirements into the non-functional quality attributes (the -ilities) that drive architecture decisions.
• You will be able to run a well-architected review of a workload against the six pillars and record the high-risk issues you find.
• You will be able to apply core architecture principles like design for failure, loose coupling, statelessness, and elasticity to a system design.
• You will be able to choose scaling patterns (load balancing, autoscaling, caching, queue-based load leveling) that match a workload's traffic profile.
• You will be able to choose resilience patterns (multi-zone redundancy, retries with backoff, circuit breakers, bulkheads) to meet an availability target.
• You will be able to reason about and defend the trade-offs between reliability, performance, cost, and security for a given design.
• You will be able to set and interpret availability and recovery targets such as SLA, SLO, RTO, and RPO, then pick a topology that meets them.
• You will be able to produce a vendor-neutral reference architecture and an architecture decision record (ADR) a delivery team can build from.

What is inside

4 modules, 8 lessons. Each module ends in a graded quiz and most carry an assignment.

1. 01

   The Architect's Lens

   Great architecture starts with knowing what you are being asked to build and how you will judge it. This module frames the Cloud Solutions Architect role, the deliverables you own, and how to turn fuzzy business requirements into concrete quality attributes. It then introduces the Well-Architected Framework so you have a shared standard for what good looks like before you design anything.

   2 lessons · 5 quiz questions

2. 02

   The Six Pillars as Design Lenses

   The six pillars turn a vague goal like "good architecture" into six specific questions you can design and review against. Lesson one defines what each pillar optimizes for. Lesson two teaches the harder skill: trading pillars off against each other and documenting the decision in a well-architected review.

   2 lessons · 5 quiz questions · assignment

3. 03

   Core Architecture Principles

   Patterns give you answers, but principles are the reasoning that tells you which answer fits. This module teaches the tenets that resilient cloud systems share: designing for failure, loose coupling, statelessness, elasticity, automation, and a bias toward managed services. You will learn to read a design, spot where it breaks a principle, and name what that shortcut will cost in production.

   2 lessons · 5 quiz questions

4. 04

   Design Patterns for Scalable, Resilient Systems

   Principles become concrete building blocks you can reach for by name. This module covers the scaling patterns that absorb growing load (horizontal scaling, load balancing, autoscaling, caching, and queue-based load leveling) and the resilience patterns that keep a system running when parts fail (multi-zone redundancy, retries with backoff and jitter, circuit breakers, and bulkheads). Every pattern is paired with the problem it solves and the trade-off it carries, so you learn not just how each one works but when to use it and what it costs.

   2 lessons · 5 quiz questions · assignment