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Aman Kulshrestha
Aman Kulshrestha

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Cloud Architecture Mistakes I Made So You Don't Have To

#aws #cloud #architecture #devops

I've been building cloud infrastructure for 5+ years. Here are the expensive lessons I learned—so you can skip the pain.

Mistake 1: Over-Engineering from Day 1

My first startup? I built a Kubernetes cluster for 50 users.

What I should've done: Start with managed services. PaaS beats IaaS for 90% of early-stage apps.

MVP Stack (0-10k users):
├── Vercel/Railway/Render (App)
├── Managed Postgres (Supabase/PlanetScale)
├── S3 for files
└── CloudFront CDN
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Kubernetes can wait until you actually need it.

Mistake 2: Single Availability Zone

"It won't go down." Famous last words.

AWS regions have multiple Availability Zones (AZs). If you're in one AZ and it has issues, you're offline.

Fix: Deploy across at least 2 AZs. Most managed services do this automatically.

Mistake 3: No Cost Alerts

I once woke up to a $3,000 AWS bill. A misconfigured Lambda was running in an infinite loop.

Fix: Set up billing alerts immediately:

# AWS CLI - Create a billing alarm
aws cloudwatch put-metric-alarm \
  --alarm-name "BillingAlarm" \
  --metric-name "EstimatedCharges" \
  --namespace "AWS/Billing" \
  --threshold 100 \
  --comparison-operator GreaterThanThreshold
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Mistake 4: Hardcoded Credentials 

// 🚨 NEVER DO THIS
const AWS_KEY = "AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE";
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I've seen production keys committed to public GitHub repos. Bots scan for these 24/7.

Fix:

  • Use environment variables
  • AWS IAM roles (no keys needed on EC2/Lambda)
  • Secrets Manager for sensitive config

Mistake 5: No Infrastructure as Code

Clicking through the AWS console works until:

  • You need to replicate in another region
  • Someone accidentally deletes something
  • You forget what you configured

Fix: Terraform or AWS CDK from the start:

# Terraform example
resource "aws_instance" "web" {
  ami           = "ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0"
  instance_type = "t3.micro"

  tags = {
    Name = "Production-Web"
    Environment = "prod"
  }
}
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Mistake 6: Ignoring Reserved Instances

I paid on-demand rates for 2 years. Reserved Instances would've saved 40%.

The math:

  • On-demand t3.medium: ~$30/month
  • 1-year reserved: ~$18/month (40% savings)
  • 3-year reserved: ~$12/month (60% savings)

If your workload is predictable, reserve it.

Mistake 7: Not Tagging Resources

Six months later: "What is this EC2 instance? Who created it? Can I delete it?"

Tag everything:

  • Environment: prod/staging/dev
  • Owner: team or person
  • Project: which project it belongs to
  • CostCenter: for billing

AWS vs Azure vs GCP: Quick Take

Choose When
AWS Widest services, startup credits, most mature
Azure Microsoft shop, enterprise, hybrid cloud
GCP Data/ML workloads, Kubernetes-native

For most startups: AWS. The ecosystem is unmatched.

Learn More

I've written a complete Cloud Architecture guide covering:

  • Detailed AWS vs Azure vs GCP comparison
  • Architecture patterns (monolith → microservices)
  • Security fundamentals
  • Cost optimization strategies
  • Scaling for growth

👉 Cloud Architecture Complete Guide

What cloud mistakes have you made? Share in the comments—we've all been there �

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