LinkedIn
Twitter
Do you need help migrating to the cloud? managing cloud spend? ensuring security and compliance? improving operational efficiency?
You've come to the right place. Today, we're thrilled to launch a new space in the Google Cloud Community dedicated to the best practices and recommendations outlined in the Google Cloud Architecture Framework. This new space is for architects, developers, administrators, and other cloud practitioners who are looking for a structured approach to designing and operating a cloud deployment model that is secure, efficient, resilient, high-performing, and cost-effective - all while meeting unique business requirements.
Together, the Google Cloud Community and Architecture Framework provide a trusted space for you to achieve your goals alongside a global community of supportive and knowledgeable peers, Googlers, and product experts. In this blog, we'll cover the key features of this new space in the Community, how the content is organized, and how you can get the most value from it.
Key features
There are a few key features of this new space, with each feature offering different benefits and engagement opportunities for Community members:
Discussion Forum: Engage in open discussion forums about designing, building, or operating your cloud architecture. Ask or answer questions, start a conversation, add comments, and share "likes."
Architecture Framework Guidance: Access a series of canonical, expert-written articles that will help you quickly find practical guidance and address specific cloud architecture questions. We'll explain more about how these articles are organized in the next section below.
Community Blog: See the latest updates to the Architecture Framework and the Community, including member spotlights, announcements, and events. The Community Blog is also where you can find blogs written by Googlers, featuring their expert recommendations and cloud architecture best practices.
How content is organized
As mentioned above, the Architecture Framework Guidance articles are a key feature of this new space. This section will explain how the articles are organized so you can quickly find what you're looking for.
The Google Cloud Architecture Framework is broken down into six different pillars, with each pillar focused on a specific topic or function critical to designing and operating your workloads. Recommendations and guidance are provided for workloads that are cloud-native, migrated from on-premises, or extended across hybrid and multicloud environments.
The articles are mapped to the pillars of the Architecture Framework, with each pillar broken down into separate articles based on the different sub-topics within each pillar. Each article includes a series of questions and recommendations to help you quickly address specific challenges related to your cloud architecture.
Here's a quick navigation guide so you can jump to the topics that are most important to you and your needs:
The System Design Pillar
Introduction to the System Design Pillar: Overview of the foundational pillar of the Architecture Framework to help you define the architecture, components, and data you need to satisfy your business and system requirements.
Geographic Zones and Regions: Best practices to deploy your system based on geographic requirements, such as availability, proximity, compliance, costs, and sustainability.
Resource Management: Recommendations for designing and managing your cloud architecture based on resource requirements, including access control, configuration settings, and mapping to the Google Cloud resource hierarchy.
Compute: Best practices for choosing a compute platform and migration approach, designing and scaling workloads, managing operations and virtual machine migrations.
Networking: Guidance for deploying your system based on networking design, including how to choose and implement Virtual Private Cloud and how to test and manage network security.
Storage: Recommendations for defining a storage strategy and selecting Google Cloud storage solutions, as well as how to best manage storage, access patterns, and workloads.
Databases: Best practices to design, migrate, and scale databases, encrypt database information, manage licensing, and monitor your database for events.
Analytics: Core principles and recommendations for data analytics in Google Cloud, including how to choose from Google's key data analytics services and how they can help at various stages of the data lifecycle.
Currently, the Architecture Framework Guidance only contains articles dedicated to the System Design Pillar, but we'll be releasing articles focused on the remaining five pillars in the coming months. For now, you can refer to the documentation hosted in the Cloud Architecture Center via the links below. We encourage you to bring any questions or insights you have from the documentation back to the Discussion Forum so others can help provide answers and benefit from the conversation.
Operational Excellence: Efficiently deploy, operate, monitor, and manage your cloud workloads
Security, Privacy, and Compliance: Maximize the security of your data and workloads in the cloud, design for privacy, and align with regulatory requirements and standards.
Reliability: Design and operate resilient and highly-available workloads in the cloud.
Cost Optimization: Maximize the business value of your investment in Google Cloud.
Performance Optimization: Design and tune your cloud resources for optimal performance.
How to get the most out of the new space
The Google Cloud Community is first and foremost your Community - and this new space dedicated to the Architecture Framework is no exception. So, to help make sure you're getting the most out of it as possible, here are a few recommendations on how to consume and engage with the content and opportunities available to you:
Review and evaluate: Review the questions and recommendations outlined in the Guidance Articles to guide how you design and operate your cloud architecture, or if you're already on Google Cloud, to verify if you're currently following best practices.
Don't go it alone: If you're unsure, confused, or unable to find what you're looking for, don't hesitate to ask a question in the Discussion Forum, or join one of our Community events. The global Community of Googlers, peers, and product experts are willing and able to help you.
Provide feedback: A cross-functional team of experts at Google refine the Architecture Framework largely based on community knowledge and insights. Help shape the future of the Architecture Framework by providing your feedback. This can be in the form of comments on articles, posts in the Discussion Forum, or conversations during our events. We take your feedback seriously and deeply value what you have to say!
Share your experience: Have you leveraged the Architecture Framework to help shape how you run on Google Cloud? We'd love to feature your success stories, best practices, or lessons learned with the Community. Leave a comment on this blog or share your story in the Forum for an opportunity to be featured in one of our member spotlights. And if you’re not yet a Google Cloud customer, please reach out to us here and someone from our team will be in touch!
As a final note, thank you to all the Google Cloud users who have helped shape the Google Cloud Community and Architecture Framework. We hope you will find the new space valuable and helpful for you as you continue to build, create, and innovate with Google Cloud solutions.