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What is cloud-native architecture?

Cloud-native architecture is an approach to building and running applications that fully exploits the cloud computing model. Applications are designed as microservices, packaged in containers, orchestrated dynamically (typically with Kubernetes), and managed through DevOps automation. The goal is resilience, scalability, and speed of deployment — not just running on cloud servers, but being built for them.

Key Considerations

  • Cloud-native ≠ cloud-hosted — lifting and shifting a monolith to AWS isn't cloud-native
  • Containers (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes) are the foundational building blocks
  • Observability (logging, tracing, metrics) is essential — distributed systems are harder to debug
  • Start with the problem, not the architecture — not every application needs microservices
What is cloud-native architecture? — FULSTK Answers | FULSTK