Nordlicht Reisen GmbH, a fictional travel agency, is rebuilding its portal, and four parts of the application need compute: the customer portal, the partner interface, a nightly processing job and the processing of uploaded photos. On campaign days the load rises to about ten times normal (G-09, assumption of the exercise). This lesson does not ask how to set up a service, but which service fits which part and which building blocks the recommendation has to define: service, size, scaling, network connection and updates.
Prior knowledge. What virtual machines, containers and functions are is covered in "AZ-900 compact, lesson 2.3"; IaaS, PaaS and serverless are classified in "AZ-900 compact, lessons 1.2 and 1.3". AZ-104 shows setup and operation in lessons 3.3 to 3.7. Functions as a development topic is covered in "K3, lesson 3.13.1", Container Apps for background work in "K3, lesson 3.5.7", serverless as an architectural style in "K4, lesson 4.11.3". Distribution across zones is covered in lesson 3.3 of this course. None of that is repeated here. Lessons 4.2 to 4.4 go deeper into the choice for virtual machines, containers and serverless.
The requirement
The requirements sheet uses the template from lesson 0.2 and the starting position G-01 to G-10. All figures and the four parts of the application are assumptions of the exercise.
The four parts: T1 customer portal (web and API, .NET, runs on Linux), T2 partner interface (runs on .NET Framework 4.8 and uses a component that exists only for Windows), T3 nightly processing job for partner exports and sales reports, T4 processing of uploaded photos (thumbnails).
| No. | Requirement | Type | Metric | Weight | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4.1-01 | T1 grows to ten times the load on campaign days without manual action (G-09). | Q | Load peak after load test at most 20 instances of the chosen size, normally 3; assumption | Must | Sales |
| 4.1-02 | T1 reaches the database in Hamburg only over the private network (G-03). | R | no public address of the database; assumption | Must | Security |
| 4.1-03 | T2 runs on Windows without a rebuild. | R | .NET Framework 4.8 plus Windows component; assumption | Must | Development |
| 4.1-04 | T3 is finished by 06:00 every night (G-10). | F | about 90 minutes of runtime, two processor cores; assumption | Should | Sales |
| 4.1-05 | T3 costs money only while it runs. | K | billing by runtime, no instance around the clock | Should | Management |
| 4.1-06 | T4 produces a thumbnail shortly after the upload (G-06). | Q | in under one minute; assumption | Should | Partner support |
| 4.1-07 | New parts need no operating system operation of their own. | R | no server patching for T1, T3 and T4; assumption | Should | Operations |
| 4.1-08 | The operations team has no Kubernetes experience. | R | assumption | Must | Operations |
| 4.1-09 | All compute is in the EU (G-08). | R | germanywestcentral |
Must | Data protection |
Cost framework. The ranking of the starting position from lesson 0.2 applies: cost comes before operating comfort, but not before availability at the load peak. Cost drivers are listed below per service; amounts are on the pricing pages.