Deliverables

The curriculum covers what an architect should know. This covers what an architect actually hands over: 55 artifacts, each with a worked example, a note on when it is worth producing, who reads it, and the ways it usually goes wrong. Filter by the artifact's type, the kind of engagement that calls for it, the stack or industry it is drawn against, or the audience it is written for.

Identify the deliverable → 42 diagrams, shown one at a time with the answer withheld. Nothing to submit.

4 of 55 deliverables shown.

flowchart TB
  users(["Users"]) --> dns["Global DNS<br/><i>latency routing + health checks</i>"]

  subgraph r1["Region: primary"]
    direction TB
    lb1["Load Balancer<br/><i>public</i>"]
    subgraph az1["Zone A"]
      n1["Node Pool<br/><i>api ×3, worker ×2</i>"]
    end
    subgraph az2["Zone B"]
      n2["Node Pool<br/><i>api ×3, worker ×2</i>"]
    end
    subgraph az3["Zone C"]
      n3["Node Pool<br/><i>api ×2, worker ×1</i>"]
    end
    db1[("Primary DB<br/><i>synchronous replica in Zone B</i>")]
    lb1 --> n1
    lb1 --> n2
    lb1 --> n3
    n1 --> db1
    n2 --> db1
    n3 --> db1
  end

  subgraph r2["Region: secondary"]
    direction TB
    lb2["Load Balancer<br/><i>warm</i>"]
    n4["Node Pool<br/><i>api ×2, scaled down</i>"]
    db2[("Read Replica<br/><i>asynchronous — RPO 30s</i>")]
    lb2 --> n4 --> db2
  end

  dns --> lb1
  dns -.->|"failover only"| lb2
  db1 -.->|"async replication"| db2

Deployment & Infrastructure View

Deployment Diagram

Which runtime artifact runs on which infrastructure, in which zone and region, and what fails when one of those boundaries fails.

Deployment Diagrams Design

flowchart LR
  subgraph e1["Ephemeral / PR"]
    direction TB
    a1["scaled to 1<br/>mocked externals<br/>synthetic data<br/><i>proves: it builds and unit-passes</i><br/>auto-destroy 24h"]
  end
  subgraph e2["Dev"]
    direction TB
    a2["shared<br/>real internal deps<br/>synthetic data<br/><i>proves: integration wiring</i><br/>anyone deploys"]
  end
  subgraph e3["Staging"]
    direction TB
    a3["prod-shaped topology<br/>real deps · sandbox externals<br/>masked prod-like data<br/><i>proves: contracts + performance</i><br/>pipeline only"]
  end
  subgraph e4["Production"]
    direction TB
    a4["full scale · multi-AZ<br/>real data<br/><i>proves: nothing — it serves</i><br/>pipeline + gate"]
  end
  e1 --> e2 --> e3 --> e4
  note["Same artifact promoted throughout.<br/>Config differs; the image digest does not."]

Deployment & Infrastructure View

Environment Topology

Which environments exist, what each one proves, what data it holds and who may deploy to it.

Environment Strategy Build

flowchart TB
  subgraph prod["Cluster: prod-eu (regional, 3 AZ)"]
    direction TB
    cp["Control plane<br/><i>managed · private endpoint</i>"]
    subgraph pools["Node pools"]
      direction LR
      np1["system<br/><i>taint: CriticalAddonsOnly</i>"]
      np2["general<br/><i>3–30 nodes · spot 40%</i>"]
      np3["memory<br/><i>taint: workload=memory</i>"]
      np4["gpu<br/><i>taint: workload=gpu</i>"]
    end
    subgraph ns["Namespaces"]
      direction LR
      n1["team-orders<br/><i>quota · NetworkPolicy<br/>default-deny</i>"]
      n2["team-pricing<br/><i>quota · NetworkPolicy</i>"]
      n3["platform<br/><i>mesh · ingress · logging</i>"]
    end
    cp --- pools
    pools --- ns
  end
  subgraph nonprod["Cluster: nonprod-eu"]
    direction TB
    x1["shared node pool<br/><i>spot 90%</i>"]
  end
  reg[("Image registry<br/><i>signed images only</i>")] --> prod
  reg --> nonprod
  gitops["GitOps reconciler"] -.->|"applies desired state"| prod

Deployment & Infrastructure View

Kubernetes Cluster Topology

How many clusters, split by what, which node pools exist and what isolates one tenant from another.

Cluster Architecture Design

flowchart TB
  inet(["Internet"])
  dc["Corporate Data Centre<br/><i>10.0.0.0/8</i>"]

  subgraph hub["Hub — 10.100.0.0/16"]
    direction TB
    fw["Egress Firewall<br/><i>FQDN allow-list</i>"]
    vpn["VPN / Direct Link<br/><i>BGP</i>"]
    dns["Private DNS Resolver"]
  end

  subgraph spokeA["Spoke: Prod — 10.101.0.0/16"]
    direction TB
    pub["Public Subnet<br/><i>10.101.0.0/24 — ingress LB only</i>"]
    app["App Subnet<br/><i>10.101.10.0/23 — no public IPs</i>"]
    data["Data Subnet<br/><i>10.101.20.0/24 — private endpoints</i>"]
    pub --> app --> data
  end

  subgraph spokeB["Spoke: Non-Prod — 10.102.0.0/16"]
    appn["App Subnet<br/><i>10.102.10.0/23</i>"]
  end

  inet -->|"443 only"| pub
  app -->|"all egress"| fw --> inet
  appn --> fw
  dc <-->|"BGP"| vpn
  vpn --- spokeA
  vpn --- spokeB
  spokeA x--x spokeB

Deployment & Infrastructure View

Network Topology Diagram

Segments, address ranges, routes and the control points between them — the view that says what can reach what at layer three.

Networking Design