Guidance

The primer and guidance topics are related to specific areas of application development, as shown in the following diagram.

The guide contains the following primers and guidance topics.

Asynchronous Messaging Primer

Messaging is a key strategy employed in many distributed environments such as the cloud. It enables applications and services to communicate and cooperate, and can help to build scalable and resilient solutions. Messaging supports asynchronous operations, enabling you to decouple a process that consumes a service from the process that implements the service.

For more info, see the Asynchronous Messaging Primer.

Autoscaling Guidance

Constantly monitoring performance and scaling a system to adapt to fluctuating workloads to meet capacity targets and optimize operational cost can be a labor-intensive process. It may not be feasible to perform these tasks manually. This is where autoscaling is useful.

For more info, see the Autoscaling Guidance.

Caching Guidance

Caching is a common technique that aims to improve the performance and scalability of a system by temporarily copying frequently accessed data to fast storage located close to the application. Caching is most effective when an application instance repeatedly reads the same data, especially if the original data store is slow relative to the speed of the cache, it is subject to a high level of contention, or it is far away resulting in network latency.

For more info, see the Caching Guidance.

Compute Partitioning Guidance

When deploying an application to the cloud it may be desirable to allocate the services and components it uses in a way that helps to minimize running costs while maintaining the scalability, performance, availability, and security of the application.

For more info, see the Compute Partitioning Guidance.

Data Consistency Primer

Cloud applications typically use data that is dispersed across data stores. Managing and maintaining data consistency in this environment can become a critical aspect of the system, particularly in terms of the concurrency and availability issues that can arise. You frequently need to trade strong consistency for performance. This means that you may need to design some aspects of your solutions around the notion of eventual consistency and accept that the data that your applications use might not be completely consistent all of the time.

For more info, see the Data Consistency Primer.

Data Partitioning Guidance

In many large-scale solutions, data is divided into separate partitions that can be managed and accessed separately. The partitioning strategy must be chosen carefully to maximize the benefits while minimizing adverse effects. Partitioning can help to improve scalability, reduce contention, and optimize performance.

For more info, see the Data Partitioning Guidance.

Data Replication and Synchronization Guidance

When you deploy an application to more than one datacenter, such as cloud and on-premises locations, you must consider how you will replicate and synchronize the data each instance of the application uses in order to maximize availability and performance, ensure consistency, and minimize data transfer costs between locations.

For more info, see the Data Replication and Synchronization Guidance.

Instrumentation and Telemetry Guidance

Most applications will include diagnostics features that generate custom monitoring and debugging information, especially when an error occurs. This is referred to as instrumentation, and is usually implemented by adding event and error handling code to the application. The process of gathering remote information that is collected by instrumentation is usually referred to as telemetry.

For more info, see the Instrumentation and Telemetry Guidance.

Multiple Datacenter Deployment Guidance

Deploying an application to more than one datacenter can provide benefits such as increased availability and a better user experience across wider geographical areas. However, there are challenges that must be resolved, such as data synchronization and regulatory limitations.

For more info, see the Multiple Datacenter Deployment Guidance.

Service Metering Guidance

You may need to meter the use of applications or services in order to plan future requirements; to gain an understanding of how they are used; or to bill users, organization departments, or customers. This is a common requirement, particularly in large corporations and for independent software vendors and service providers.

For more info, see the Service Metering Guidance.

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