Azure Mythbusters: Cloud is new, so there are no clear architecture patterns!
There are a lot of established cloud design patterns.
These don’t all apply specifically to Azure, either – some of them apply intrinsically to cloud services, and some to general services and architectures. If you’ve been to the Azure Architecture Center before, and you’ve seen what used to be the patterns and practices guidance, I’d advise you to take another look. We’re adding new ones all the time as we see them, all of which are common patterns that Azure customers are using to isolate and work around things they see in applications to make them work better.
One example is Cache Aside. It’s a reasonably simplistic pattern, which focuses on how you can handle non-write back caches. So if you’ve got an application that reads through data and you want to lazily popular that cache by not loading everything up in advance, this pattern could work for you.
You don’t read the data store first – you query the cache to see if the item is already there. If it is already there, we’ve got an updated, ready-to-use piece of data. If it’s not, go and fetch it from the store but don’t return – put it in the cache, and let the cache return it back. It’s the action of the cache querying the data store rather than the front-end application, and the application queries the cache only.
There’s a lot of detail on Cache Aside including working examples up on the architecture center, as well as the other patterns featured in this episode.
This video, by Chris Reddington and Will Eastbury, is the third instalment in this new series that aims to bust some of the myths surrounding Azure technologies. With their expertise, you’ll learn about Azure architecture patterns with explanations of a select few, as well as why the myth exists in the first place.
Stay tuned for the next instalment of Azure Mythbusters! Until then, here are some useful resources for learning more on the topic of Azure architecture patterns.
