Azure Architecture Center

Design solutions on Azure using established patterns and practices. Azure Architecture Center is a catalog of solution ideas, example workloads, reference architectures, technology decision guides, and architecture guides for Azure workloads.

Architecture

Browse Azure architectures

Concept

Build using application architecture fundamentals

Reference

Make technology choices

Concept

Learn cloud design patterns

What's new

See what's new and updated

Architecting applications on Azure

Explore best practices and patterns for building applications on Microsoft Azure.

Design for the cloud

• Learn fundamental architecture styles
• Use best practices in cloud applications
• Avoid performance anti-patterns
• Use responsible engineering practices
• Use cloud design patterns

Choose the right technology

• Choose a compute service
• Choose a container service
• Choose a data store
• Choose AI services
• Choose a messaging service

Implement Azure landing zones

• Deploy Azure landing zones
• Bicep-based landing zones
• Terraform-based landing zones
• Automate through subscription vending
• Application landing zone solutions

Specialized scenarios

• Architecture for startups
• Architecture for SaaS and multitenant applications
• Build mission-critical workloads
• Azure for AWS professionals
• Azure for Google Cloud professionals

Technology areas

Explore architectures and guides for different technologies.

Popular articles

• Baseline OpenAI end-to-end chat architecture
• Develop and optimize a RAG implementation
• Cloud design patterns
• Hub-spoke network topology
• AKS production baseline
• Choose your Azure compute service
• CQRS design pattern

AI & Machine Learning

• AI architecture design
• Azure OpenAI baseline architecture
• Build a generative AI gateway
• Develop and optimize a RAG implementation
• Use MLOps
• Use GenAIOps

Analytics

• Analytics architecture design
• Choose a data analytics technology
• Analytics end-to-end with Azure Synapse
• Enterprise business intelligence
• Near real-time lakehouse data processing
• Stream processing with Azure Databricks

Compute

• Choose an Azure compute service
• Run a Linux VM on Azure
• Run a Windows VM on Azure
• Azure VM baseline architecture
• Understand multi-region compute balancing
• Build workloads on spot virtual machines

Containers

• Choose a container service
• Design for Azure Kubernetes Service
• Azure Kubernetes Service baseline cluster
• Plan Day-2 operations on AKS
• Deploy microservices with Azure Container Apps
• Deploy microservices with Azure Container Apps and Dapr

Databases

• Databases architecture design
• Migrate an Oracle database to Azure
• DataOps for a modern data warehouse
• Design a medallion lakehouse
• Use change feed to replicate data
• Intelligent apps using Azure Database for PostgreSQL

Hybrid + multicloud

• Hybrid architecture design
• Azure hybrid options
• Connect a cross-premises network to Azure
• Azure Local baseline architecture
• Hybrid Kubernetes clusters
• Hybrid file services

Identity

• Identity architecture design
• Identity in multitenant architectures
• Building applications to work across Entra tenants
• Integrate on-premises AD with Microsoft Entra ID
• Extend AD DS to Azure
• Create an AD DS forest in Azure

Networking

• Choose a hybrid network architecture
• Hub-spoke topology
• ExpressRoute with VPN failover
• Implement a secure hybrid network
• Highly available network virtual appliances
• Segment virtual networks

Security

• Security architecture design
• Azure security in AWS
• Zero-trust network with Azure Firewall and Application Gateway
• Homomorphic encryption with SEAL
• Securely managed web applications

Web apps

• Enterprise web app patterns
• Basic web application
• Baseline zone-redundant web application
• Multi-region deployment
• E-commerce product search
• Protect APIs with Application Gateway and API Management
• Serverless web application

Cloud adoption and workload design

Build a strong cloud adoption strategy and a consistent approach to workload design.

Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure

Azure Well-Architected Framework pillars

Well-architected workloads

Well-architected service guides