Designing a Cloud Architecture from Scratch

Designing a cloud architecture from scratch involves several critical steps and considerations.

Here's a structured approach to designing a cloud architecture on Brainboard:

• Understand the Basics of Cloud Architecture: Cloud architecture represents a real infrastructure that can be deployed or is already deployed. It acts as a container and graphical representation of cloud resources within an environment inside a project​​.
• Components of Cloud Architecture: Consider your architecture as a Git repository containing all cloud resources of your infrastructure​​.
• Architecture Information: Detail all high-level information related to the architecture, including its name, status (such as WIP, reviewing, approved), description, tags, creation and update timestamps, and unique identifier​​.
• Nodes in Architecture: Nodes are fundamental components that represent cloud resources. Each node has an identity card containing its cloud configuration, and you can connect nodes using connectors. Types of nodes include cloud resources, data sources, Terraform modules, containers, and icon-only nodes​​.
• Variables and Outputs: Define Terraform variables and outputs that can be used both during the design phase and deployment​​.
• **Documentation: **Maintain a Readme file for your infrastructure in markdown, which Brainboard can convert to HTML​​.
• Version Tracking: Create multiple versions of your infrastructure to track changes effectively​​.
• Creating Architecture: You can create a new architecture from scratch, clone a template from the templates' catalog, or import an existing architecture​​.
• Default Tags and Multi-user Collaboration: Utilize default tags for resources and facilitate multi-user collaboration by allowing multiple users to connect and collaboratively build the architecture​​​​.
• Cloning and Promoting Architecture: Clone an architecture within the same environment or promote it to another environment. This helps in reusing existing designs and adapting them to new contexts​​​​.
• Template Creation: Create templates from any architecture for organizational or public use, ensuring sensitive information is removed​​.
• Deleting Architecture: Understand the process and implications of deleting an architecture, including the irreversible nature of this action and the possibility of recovery in some cases​​.
• Deployment Options: Deploy your architecture using one-action to trigger Terraform apply or build pipelines with Brainboard's CI/CD engine​​.
• Best Practices: Always include security checks in your default pipeline, create versions frequently for easy rollback, and keep the architecture's status updated​​.

This approach provides a comprehensive framework for designing a cloud architecture on Brainboard, incorporating various elements from planning and documentation to deployment and best practices.