A small collection of cloud architecture designs I have built or would build, kept here as a learning journey from a 2022 classic 3-tier to a 2026 hybrid reference architecture.
A reference architecture connecting an on-premises Microsoft 365 estate to a modern AWS landing zone. Models the kind of environment I operate today (HPE/Dell servers, M365, Cisco network) and how I would extend it into the cloud.
flowchart LR
subgraph Onprem["On-Premises · Seoul"]
HPE["HPE / Dell<br/>VMware ESXi"]
AD["Active Directory"]
HPE --- AD
end
subgraph M365["Microsoft 365"]
ENTRA["Entra ID"]
INTUNE["Intune + Defender"]
end
subgraph AWS["AWS · ap-northeast-2"]
direction TB
EDGE["Route 53 → CloudFront<br/>WAF + Shield"]
ALB["ALB"]
ECS["ECS Fargate"]
DB["Aurora Serverless v2"]
EDGE --> ALB --> ECS --> DB
SEC["GuardDuty · Security Hub<br/>CloudTrail Lake · Config"]
OBS["CloudWatch · X-Ray<br/>Managed Prometheus + Grafana"]
IAC["Terraform + GitHub Actions<br/>OIDC Federation"]
end
AD <-->|"Entra Connect"| ENTRA
Onprem <-->|"Direct Connect / VPN"| AWS
ENTRA <-->|"SAML / OIDC<br/>IAM Identity Center"| AWS
See designs/02-hybrid-cloud-2026/ for:
- Full architecture write-up with identity, connectivity, security, and delivery layers
- Editable
architecture.drawiosource (open in diagrams.net) - Disaster recovery tiering and cost guardrails
A traditional 3-tier AWS architecture from 2022: ALB → EC2 web tier → NLB → WAS in private subnets, with Bastion host, Client VPN, CloudTrail, and CodePipeline. Kept as a learning baseline.
The README in that folder includes a side-by-side comparison of what I would change in 2026 (Fargate instead of EC2, GitHub Actions instead of CodeCommit, Session Manager instead of Bastion host, etc.).
| Format | How to view |
|---|---|
| Mermaid (this README) | Renders inline on GitHub automatically |
.drawio |
Open in diagrams.net (web, free) or download draw.io desktop |
.png |
Renders inline in any markdown viewer |
To export a .drawio file to PNG: open in diagrams.net → File → Export As → PNG.
Byeongki "Ki" Cho -- bilingual cloud and infrastructure engineer in Seoul. LinkedIn