Architecture Patterns

Modernization Approaches

Choose the right modernization path based on your application's complexity, team capabilities, and business objectives.

Container-First (EKS/ECS)

Containerize applications and deploy on managed Kubernetes (EKS) or ECS for predictable scaling, portable workloads, and consistent environments.

Reference Architecture:

ALB → EKS Ingress Controller → Service Mesh (App Mesh)
Microservices (pods) → RDS Aurora | DynamoDB | ElastiCache
Karpenter (autoscaling) → CloudWatch Container Insights
EKS ECS Fargate ECR App Mesh

Serverless-First (Lambda)

Event-driven architectures with Lambda, API Gateway, and Step Functions. Pay-per-execution with zero infrastructure management.

Reference Architecture:

API Gateway → Lambda (business logic) → DynamoDB
EventBridge → Step Functions (orchestration) → SQS/SNS
S3 Events → Lambda (processing) → OpenSearch
Lambda Step Functions EventBridge API Gateway

Hybrid (Strangler Fig)

Incrementally extract services from the monolith using the Strangler Fig pattern. Route traffic between legacy and new services with ALB.

Strategy:

  • 1. Identify bounded contexts in monolith
  • 2. Extract service with anti-corruption layer
  • 3. Route via ALB path-based routing
  • 4. Gradually shift traffic to new service
  • 5. Decommission legacy component
ALB App Runner SQS

Event-Driven Architecture

Loosely coupled services communicating via events. EventBridge for routing, SQS for buffering, and SNS for fan-out patterns.

Event Patterns:

  • • Event sourcing with DynamoDB Streams
  • • CQRS with separate read/write models
  • • Saga pattern with Step Functions
  • • Fan-out with SNS + SQS subscriptions
  • • Dead-letter queues for resilience
EventBridge SQS SNS Kinesis

CI/CD & Deployment Automation

Fully automated deployment pipelines with blue/green, canary, and rolling update strategies on AWS.

AWS CodePipeline

End-to-end CI/CD orchestration with source (CodeCommit/GitHub), build (CodeBuild), and deploy stages. Cross-account deployments with approval gates.

AWS CodeBuild

Managed build service with custom environments, parallel builds, and caching. Docker image builds, unit tests, SAST scanning, and artifact generation.

AWS CodeDeploy

Blue/green deployments for EC2, ECS, and Lambda. Automatic rollback on CloudWatch alarm triggers with traffic shifting controls.

GitOps with ArgoCD

Declarative deployments on EKS using ArgoCD. Git as single source of truth for cluster state with automatic drift detection.

Pipeline Architecture

1
Source: GitHub/CodeCommit → triggers pipeline on merge to main
2
Build: CodeBuild → lint, test, SAST scan, Docker build → push to ECR
3
Test: Integration tests → performance tests → security scan (Inspector)
4
Staging: Deploy to staging EKS cluster → smoke tests → manual approval
5
Production: Blue/green deploy → canary (10%→50%→100%) → rollback on alarm

AWS Services for Modernization

Amazon EKS

  • • Managed Kubernetes control plane
  • • Karpenter for intelligent autoscaling
  • • EKS Blueprints for standardized clusters
  • • Pod Identity for IAM integration
  • • Container Insights for observability

AWS Lambda

  • • Event-driven compute (0-15 min)
  • • Provisioned concurrency for latency
  • • Lambda SnapStart for Java cold starts
  • • Powertools for structured logging
  • • Lambda@Edge for CDN compute

AWS Fargate

  • • Serverless containers (ECS/EKS)
  • • No cluster capacity management
  • • Fargate Spot for 70% savings
  • • ECS Service Connect for mesh
  • • Task-level IAM roles

AWS Step Functions

  • • Visual workflow orchestration
  • • Express workflows (high-throughput)
  • • Error handling & retry logic
  • • 200+ AWS SDK integrations
  • • Distributed map for batch

AWS App Runner

  • • Source-to-deployment in minutes
  • • Auto-scaling to zero
  • • Built-in HTTPS & load balancing
  • • VPC connector for private access
  • • Ideal for web APIs and services

Amazon EventBridge

  • • Serverless event bus
  • • Schema registry & discovery
  • • Event replay for debugging
  • • Archive & replay events
  • • 90+ AWS service sources

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