Multicloud Architect: Designing Scalable Workloads in AWS & Azure

This two-day instructor-led course provides a comprehensive exploration of multicloud architecture principles, focusing on AWS and Azure. Participants will gain hands-on experience and strategic insights into designing, securing, and optimizing multicloud environments. The course covers foundational concepts, identity and access management, networking, compute orchestration, data strategies, observability, infrastructure as code, and cost optimization.

Designed for cloud architects, engineers, and IT professionals, this course blends theory with practical labs to equip learners with the skills needed to build resilient, secure, and cost-effective multicloud solutions.

By the end of this course, learners will be able to:

• Define and evaluate multicloud architecture patterns and use cases
• Design secure identity and access control strategies across cloud platforms
• Implement cross-cloud networking and traffic management solutions
• Deploy and manage compute and container workloads across AWS and Azure
• Architect data storage, replication, and database strategies in multicloud setups
• Monitor and optimize performance using observability tools
• Automate infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines across cloud environments
• Apply FinOps principles to manage and reduce multicloud costs

Participants should have:

• A foundational understanding of cloud computing concepts
• Basic experience with AWS and/or Azure services
• Familiarity with networking, identity management, and DevOps practices
• Experience with infrastructure as code and containerization is beneficial but not required.

Target Audience

This course is designed for:

• Cloud Architects
• Cloud Engineers
• Any IT professional involved in architecting Cloud based solutions using Azure and AWS.

Module 1: Multicloud Architecture Foundations

Defining Multicloud Architecture

• What is multicloud and why it matters
• Key drivers for multicloud adoption (compliance, resilience, cost)
• Common multicloud use cases and patterns

Benefits and Challenges

• Avoiding vendor lock-in
• High availability and disaster recovery
• Managing complexity (networking, identity, security)

Multicloud Design Considerations

• Standardization vs. cloud-specific optimizations
• Interoperability and workload portability
• Designing for latency, performance, and redundancy
• Integration of SLAs across cloud providers

Key Architectural Patterns

• Active-active and active-passive architectures
• Hybrid cloud vs. multicloud strategies
• Managing stateful vs. stateless workloads

Module 2: Identity, Security & Access Control Across Clouds

Multicloud Identity Management

• Identity federation (SAML, OIDC, SCIM)
• Cross-cloud identity integration (Azure AD vs. AWS IAM)
• Single Sign-On (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA)

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) & Policies

• IAM roles, policies, and permissions
• Azure RBAC vs. AWS IAM policies
• Principle of least privilege (PoLP) implementation

Cross-Cloud Security Challenges

• Managing secrets and credentials (AWS Secrets Manager vs. Azure Key Vault)
• Zero Trust security model for multicloud
• Logging and auditing (AWS CloudTrail vs. Azure Monitor)

Module 3: Networking & Interconnectivity for Multicloud

Networking Basics in AWS & Azure

• VPC (AWS) vs. VNet (Azure)
• CIDR block planning and IP address management

Cross-Cloud Connectivity Strategies

• Site-to-site VPNs (AWS Site-to-Site VPN vs. Azure VPN Gateway)
• Dedicated interconnect (AWS Direct Connect vs. Azure ExpressRoute)
• SD-WAN and third-party solutions

Traffic Management & Load Balancing

• AWS Elastic Load Balancer vs. Azure Load Balancer
• Global load balancing (AWS Global Accelerator vs. Azure Front Door)
• Traffic steering between clouds using DNS (Route 53 vs. Azure Traffic Manager)

Security & Performance Considerations

• End-to-end encryption (TLS, IPSec)
• Latency optimization and bandwidth management
• DDoS protection strategies across clouds

Module 4: Compute & Container Orchestration Across AWS & Azure

Compute Services Overview

• EC2 vs. Azure Virtual Machines
• Serverless options (AWS Lambda vs. Azure Functions)
• Auto-scaling strategies in both clouds

Containerization and Kubernetes

• AWS EKS vs. Azure AKS
• Running multi-cloud Kubernetes clusters
• Service mesh for cross-cloud communication (Istio, Linkerd)

Hybrid and Edge Computing

• AWS Outposts vs. Azure Stack
• Running workloads at the edge (AWS Wavelength, Azure Edge Zones)

Optimizing Compute for Cost & Performance

• Spot Instances vs. Azure Spot VMs
• Compute Savings Plans and Reserved Instances

Module 5: Data & Storage Management in a Multicloud Setup

Cloud Storage Options

• AWS S3 vs. Azure Blob Storage
• Block storage (EBS vs. Azure Managed Disks)
• File storage solutions (Amazon FSx vs. Azure Files)

Cross-Cloud Data Replication

• AWS DataSync vs. Azure Data Box
• Ensuring data consistency (eventual vs. strong consistency)
• Backup and disaster recovery solutions

Database Strategies

• Managed databases (AWS RDS vs. Azure SQL Database)
• NoSQL options (DynamoDB vs. CosmosDB)
• Cross-cloud database replication and failover

Data Security & Compliance

• Encryption at rest and in transit
• Cross-region data governance and sovereignty considerations

Module 6: Observability & Monitoring Across Clouds

Monitoring Tools & Services

• AWS CloudWatch vs. Azure Monitor
• Distributed tracing tools (AWS X-Ray vs. Azure Application Insights)

Log Aggregation & Analysis

• Centralized logging strategies (AWS OpenSearch vs. Azure Log Analytics)
• Cross-cloud SIEM solutions (AWS Security Hub, Microsoft Sentinel)

Real-Time Alerts & Incident Management

• Setting up alerts and notifications across clouds
• Integrating with third-party observability platforms (Datadog, Splunk, Prometheus)

Multicloud Performance Optimization

• Synthetic monitoring and real-user monitoring (RUM)
• Latency troubleshooting and mitigation

Module 7: Infrastructure as Code & CI/CD for Multicloud

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Overview

• AWS CloudFormation vs. Azure Resource Manager
• Using Terraform for cloud-agnostic deployments

CI/CD Pipelines for Multicloud

• AWS CodePipeline vs. Azure DevOps
• GitHub Actions for multicloud automation
• Containerized deployments with AWS CodeBuild & Azure Pipelines

Automation & Configuration Management

• Ansible, Chef, and Puppet for cross-cloud configurations
• Policy as Code for security and compliance (AWS Config vs. Azure Policy)

Best Practices for Multicloud DevOps

• Managing state and secrets in pipelines
• Blue-green and canary deployments across clouds

Module 8: Cost Optimisation & FinOps for Multicloud

Understanding Cloud Costs

• AWS Cost Explorer vs. Azure Cost Management
• Multicloud billing challenges and hidden costs

FinOps Framework for Multicloud

• Tagging and cost allocation best practices
• Optimizing reserved instances and savings plans

Rightsizing & Optimization Techniques

• Automated instance rightsizing tools
• Storage tiering strategies to reduce costs

Cost Visibility & Reporting

• Cross-cloud cost dashboards and third-party tools (CloudHealth, Apptio)
• Building a cost-aware engineering culture

Exams and Assessments

There is no specific exam or certification associated with this course.

Hands-On Learning

This course includes the following practical labs:

• Multicloud Networking: Securely Connecting Virtual Networks in AWS and Azure
• Compute & Serverless Resource Orchestration in Azure
• Multicloud Observability: Single Pane of Glass for AWS and Azure
• Multi-Cloud Infrastructure as Code with Terraform and Ansible