Architecture Drills

GCP PCA Drill: Database Migration Strategy - The Cutover Trade-off

16 December 2025·909 words·5 mins

Architecture Drills Google Cloud Platform GCP PCA GCP FinOps SRE Cloud SQL

A high-level summary and strategic analysis of migrating an on-premises MySQL application to Cloud SQL on Compute Engine with minimal downtime and data loss.

AWS SAA-C03 Drill: Large-Scale Data Migration - The Bandwidth-Cost-Time Trade-off Analysis

16 December 2025·1431 words·7 mins

Architecture Drills AWS SAA-C03 FinOps Decision Matrix AWS Snowball S3 File Gateway Data Migration Bandwidth Optimization

A 70TB NFS migration scenario that tests your understanding of AWS data transfer services, bandwidth constraints, and the critical trade-off between migration speed and network utilization. Learn why physical data transfer devices trump internet-based solutions at scale.

GCP ACE Drill: Global Relational Database - The Scalability vs. Configuration Trade-off

15 December 2025·1027 words·5 mins

Architecture Drills Google Cloud Platform ACE GCP FinOps SRE Cloud Spanner Cloud SQL Database Selection

When a social fitness app needs a relational database that scales globally with minimal configuration, the choice between Cloud SQL, Cloud Spanner, and NoSQL options reveals critical insights about managed service selection and future-proof architecture.

AWS SAP-C02 Drill: Serverless Edge Computing - The Header Manipulation Trade-off Analysis

15 December 2025·1605 words·8 mins

Architecture Drills AWS SAP-C02 FinOps Decision Matrix CloudFront Lambda@Edge CloudFront Functions API Gateway Serverless Edge Computing

How to architect serverless metadata delivery for legacy IoT devices: CloudFront Functions vs Lambda@Edge vs API Gateway - a FinOps and performance trade-off analysis for AWS SAP-C02.

AWS SAA-C03 Drill: Stateful Application Storage - The Shared State Trade-off Analysis

15 December 2025·933 words·5 mins

Architecture Drills AWS SAA-C03 FinOps Decision Matrix Amazon EFS Application Load Balancer Multi-AZ Storage Architecture

When scaling a stateful web application across multiple Availability Zones, local EBS storage creates data silos. This drill explores the architectural decision between EBS replication, session affinity, and shared file systems like Amazon EFS.

GCP PCA Drill: Cost Optimization - The Compute Engine Idle-Time Trade-off

14 December 2025·778 words·4 mins

Architecture Drills Google Cloud Platform GCP PCA GCP FinOps SRE Compute Engine

A global fintech startup needs to reduce costs by managing non-production Compute Engine workloads that have different availability requirements from production.

GCP ACE Drill: Cloud Cost Estimation - The Pricing Calculator Strategy

14 December 2025·1186 words·6 mins

Architecture Drills Google Cloud Platform GCP ACE GCP FinOps Cloud Pricing Calculator Cloud SQL Compute Engine Cost Optimization

Learn why the Google Cloud Pricing Calculator is the foundational tool for accurate cost estimation when migrating three-tier applications to GCP, and how to avoid common pitfalls like manual spreadsheets or premature production testing.

AWS SAP-C02 Drill: Stateful App Migration - The Aurora Auto Scaling and Load Balancer Trade-off Analysis

14 December 2025·1598 words·8 mins

Architecture Drills AWS SAP-C02 FinOps Decision Matrix Aurora PostgreSQL Application Load Balancer Auto Scaling Stateful Applications Session Affinity

This SAP-C02 drill examines how to architect for both database read scalability (Aurora Replicas) and application session consistency (ALB sticky sessions) when migrating stateful workloads—a common pitfall that distinguishes professional-level thinking from associate-level shortcuts.

AWS SAA-C03 Drill: VPC Endpoint for Private S3 Access - The Security-Cost Trade-off Analysis

14 December 2025·619 words·3 mins

Architecture Drills Cloud Provider AWS SAA-C03 FinOps VPC Endpoint Amazon S3 Security

A cloud application running on EC2 instances inside a VPC needs to privately access logs stored in Amazon S3 without internet connectivity. This drill explores how to securely enable S3 access by evaluating different AWS solution options.

GCP ACE Drill: Bigtable Security Logging - The Audit Logging Trade-off

12 December 2025·693 words·4 mins

Architecture Drills Google Cloud Platform GCP ACE GCP FinOps SRE Bigtable Audit Logs

This drill explores how to enable comprehensive read/write logging of sensitive Bigtable data for integration with a SIEM system, detailing the trade-offs and best practices in audit log management.