Architecture#
Where Components names the primitives, architecture is the set of structural decisions that bind them into one system, how the parts interface, where the boundaries fall, and which failures the design has to survive. The account boundaries, the network topology, the failure domains, the tenant walls, and the cost profile are all settled above any single service, and they outlive the code that runs inside them.
Architecture is also reconnaissance. The same decisions the operator makes to stand up resilient infrastructure are the ones they recognize on a target, a landing-zone layout exposes the org chart, a network topology exposes the trust boundaries, a tenancy model exposes the blast radius of a single stolen credential. Map the architecture and the operator knows where the seams are.
Account and organization structure, guardrails, and the multi-account baseline infrastructure is built on.
Development, training, and operational tiers, and how a change earns its way forward to the mission.
VPC design, hub-and-spoke, segmentation, and the ingress and egress paths that define the trust boundaries.
Multi-region, high availability, failover, and the RPO and RTO targets disaster recovery is measured against.
Single-tenant, pooled, and silo isolation models, and the blast radius each one accepts.
The cost profile of the infrastructure, where spend accumulates, and the FinOps trade-offs the architecture commits to.
The application styles that run on the infrastructure, from monolith to microservices, and how each one got here.