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Cloud Architecture

A capability-first view of the three major clouds — what each provides, how the pieces compose, and what it costs. Products are organized by a common category taxonomy so AWS, Azure, and GCP line up apples-to-apples; pricing is generated from a live cost catalog (never hand-typed), so the numbers stay current.

Reference architecture (provider-agnostic)

Section titled “Reference architecture (provider-agnostic)”

How the capabilities compose for a typical workload. Each provider page localizes these boxes to its own flagship services.

flowchart TB
  user([Users])
  subgraph Edge["Edge / Delivery"]
    cdn[CDN]
    dns[DNS]
    waf[WAF / API Gateway]
  end
  subgraph Net["Networking"]
    lb[Load Balancer]
    vpc[VPC / VNet]
  end
  subgraph Comp["Compute Tier"]
    vm[VMs]
    k8s[Containers / Kubernetes]
    fn[Serverless Functions]
  end
  subgraph Data["Data Tier"]
    rel[(Relational DB)]
    nosql[(NoSQL)]
    cache[(Cache)]
    obj[(Object Storage)]
  end
  subgraph Insight["Analytics / AI"]
    dwh[(Data Warehouse)]
    stream[Streaming / ETL]
    ml[AI/ML Platform]
  end
  subgraph Cross["Cross-cutting"]
    iam[Identity & IAM]
    sec[Security / KMS / Secrets]
    obs[Observability]
    iac[IaC / CI-CD]
  end
  user --> cdn --> waf --> lb --> Comp
  Comp --> Data --> Insight
  Cross -. governs .-> Comp
  Cross -. governs .-> Data

Service map — flagship product by category

Section titled “Service map — flagship product by category”

The canonical equivalence across providers. The first capabilities (compute/storage/serverless) map 1:1 to the pricing comparison; the rest extend the picture qualitatively.

CategoryAWSAzureGCP
Compute (VM)EC2Virtual MachinesCompute Engine
ContainersEKS / ECS / FargateAKS / Container AppsGKE / Cloud Run
Serverless functionsLambdaFunctionsCloud Functions / Cloud Run
Object storageS3Blob StorageCloud Storage
Block storageEBSManaged DisksPersistent Disk
File storageEFS / FSxAzure FilesFilestore
Relational DBRDS / AuroraAzure SQL / DB for PostgreSQLCloud SQL / AlloyDB
NoSQLDynamoDBCosmos DBFirestore / Bigtable
Data warehouseRedshiftSynapse / FabricBigQuery
CacheElastiCacheCache for RedisMemorystore
Networking (VPC)VPCVirtual NetworkVPC
Load balancingELB (ALB/NLB)Load Balancer / App GatewayCloud Load Balancing
CDNCloudFrontFront Door / CDNCloud CDN
DNSRoute 53Azure DNSCloud DNS
Messaging / eventingSQS / SNS / EventBridgeService Bus / Event GridPub/Sub
StreamingKinesis / MSKEvent HubsPub/Sub / Dataflow
Analytics / big dataEMR / Glue / AthenaSynapse / DatabricksDataproc / Dataflow
AI/ML platformSageMaker / BedrockAzure ML / Azure OpenAIVertex AI
Integration / iPaaSStep Functions / AppFlowLogic AppsWorkflows
API managementAPI GatewayAPI ManagementApigee
Identity & IAMIAM / CognitoEntra ID (Azure AD)Cloud IAM / Identity Platform
Security & key mgmtGuardDuty / Security Hub / KMSDefender / Key VaultSecurity Command Center / Cloud KMS
SecretsSecrets ManagerKey VaultSecret Manager
ObservabilityCloudWatch / X-RayMonitor / App InsightsCloud Operations
IaC / DevOpsCloudFormation / CDKARM / Bicep / Azure DevOpsDeployment Mgr / Cloud Build
Container registryECRACRArtifact Registry
Data migrationDMS / DataSyncDatabase Migration / Data BoxDatabase Migration / Transfer

Cloudflare — the edge-native alternative

Section titled “Cloudflare — the edge-native alternative”

Cloudflare competes in a partial, edge-native slice — object storage (R2), serverless (Workers), and CDN — with one decisive differentiator: $0 egress. It has no VM / block storage / managed-DB / Kubernetes offering, so it sits beside the three majors rather than inside the head-to-head comparison.

Pricing on the comparison and per-provider pages is generated from a live cost catalog and stamped with an as_of date — re-generated rather than hand-edited, so it reflects current list/live prices. Indicative, not a quote; excludes committed-use discounts, support, and tax.

In this section

Section titled “In this section”

Articles