I am currently getting myself up to speed with AWS through an AWS Certified Solution Architect – Associate training.

As an architect with quite a bit of background in infrastructures, I was surprised by the level of minute infrastructure details that are still needed for the design of a simple virtualized environment. Even more so by and the amount of subsequent manual configuration to setup an environment. The level is no less than what is needed for a physical environment. My ignorance for sure, but I had expected the IaaS provider to hide much more detail from the user. What you see however is that server and network details up to things like CIDR blocks is still needed. 

I guess there is an opportunity to create more high level infrastructure boilerplates. Around 2000 I was involved in many projects needing similar detailed design for the e-business infrastructures clients needed at that time. After having done that a few times we find that these infrastructure are in fact very similar. For a service like AWS I can similarly envision a boilerplate that needs only that entering of a limited number of functional and non-functional requirements for an setup like a web application infrastructure with a user registry, a scaleable set of application servers and highly available  relational database management system.

(I am assuming IBM, Google, Microsoft and others are not different in this respect, but admittedly I have not checked all of them)

To be fair, AWS does have include a quite extensive documentation system available with reference architectures, technical guides and whitepapers. Here you can find blueprints for solutions, and guidance how to set up such solutions in AWS. Addin assets, tools, automations to support users in setting up such best practice configurations would probably be a great addition to AWS’ Architecture Center and/or Marketplace.

What’s your experience?