Core Concepts

Understanding these fundamental concepts will help you work more effectively with Architecto.

Architecture Terminology

Topology

The visual representation of your entire cloud infrastructure and how components interact. In Architecto, a topology is a directed graph where nodes represent cloud components and edges represent data flows.

Node

A single component in your architecture topology. Nodes represent cloud services:

• Compute: EC2, Lambda, ECS, App Engine
• Storage: S3, EBS, RDS, DynamoDB
• Networking: VPC, Load Balancer, CloudFront, Route 53
• Messaging: SQS, SNS, Kafka, RabbitMQ
• Analytics: Redshift, BigQuery, Snowflake

Flow

A connection between two nodes representing data movement:

• Synchronous flows represent real-time request/response (REST API, gRPC, database queries)
• Asynchronous flows represent event-driven messaging (SQS, Kafka, webhooks)
• Data pipeline flows represent scheduled batch processes (ETL jobs, backups)

Component

A group of related nodes serving a specific function (e.g., "database layer," "API tier," "ML pipeline").

Profile

A predefined configuration for a cloud provider, including:

• Service catalog (which services are available)
• Pricing data (cost per unit)
• Regional availability
• Provider-specific features

Architecto includes profiles for AWS, GCP, Azure, Kubernetes, and Docker.

Architecture Properties

Availability

How resilient your architecture is to component failures:

• Single AZ — All components in one availability zone (fast, cheap, risky)
• Multi-AZ — Components replicated across multiple zones (slower, more costly, resilient)
• Multi-Region — Replicated across geographic regions (highest resilience, highest cost)

Scalability

How the architecture handles increased load:

• Vertical Scaling — Bigger instance types (limited by hardware)
• Horizontal Scaling — More instances behind load balancer (unlimited, more complex)
• Auto-Scaling — Automatically add/remove instances based on load (optimal efficiency)

Cost

The financial implications:

• Fixed Costs — Don't vary with usage (reserved instances, contracts)
• Variable Costs — Scale with usage (per-hour compute, per-GB storage)
• Egress Costs — Data transfer out of cloud provider

Security

Protection against unauthorized access and attacks:

• Authentication — Verify who you are (login, API keys)
• Authorization — Verify what you can access (permissions, roles)
• Encryption — Data protection (at-rest with KMS, in-transit with TLS)
• Compliance — Meeting regulations (SOC2, HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR)

Workflow Concepts

Architecture Design

The process of creating your infrastructure architecture:

1. Brainstorm — What does the system need to do?
2. Sketch — Draw initial topology (with AI help or patterns)
3. Refine — Add details, components, connections
4. Analyze — Run cost, security, scalability analysis
5. Iterate — Based on findings, adjust design
6. Finalize — Lock in architecture design

Architecture Review

The process of validating an architecture before implementation:

1. Share — Send architecture to reviewers via token link
2. Feedback — Reviewers add comments and suggestions
3. Discussion — Threaded conversations about components
4. Refinement — Designer updates based on feedback
5. Approval — Reviewers sign off on final design

Version Management

Tracking changes to architectures over time:

• Versions — Snapshots of your architecture at different points
• Comparison — See what changed between versions
• Rollback — Revert to previous version if needed
• Changelog — Document why changes were made

Data Organization

Projects

Organizational units for grouping related architectures. A project might be:

• A microservice (each service is one project)
• A product (entire product architecture)
• An initiative (e.g., "Cloud Migration 2024")

Workspaces

Shared spaces where teams collaborate on architectures. Within a workspace:

• Multiple team members can access the same architectures
• Permissions control who can view/edit
• Comments and reviews happen in real-time

Organizations

Top-level grouping for companies or large projects:

• Manage team members and their roles
• Control billing and subscription
• Set organization-wide policies
• Manage integrations (GitHub, Discord, etc.)

Analysis Concepts

Analysis Modules

Specialized tools for evaluating your architecture:

Bottleneck

A component that limits the overall performance of your system. Common bottlenecks:

• Database bottleneck → Add replicas, caching, sharding
• Network bottleneck → Add CDN, optimize queries
• Compute bottleneck → Add servers, use auto-scaling

Scalability Limit

The maximum load your architecture can handle before quality degrades:

• Throughput limit — Max requests/second
• User limit — Max concurrent users
• Data limit — Max data size or transactions

Export & Sharing

Export Formats

Themes

Visual customization applied to exports:

• Component colors — Different colors for different service types
• Background — Solid, gradient, pattern, custom image
• Typography — Font family, sizes, weights
• Logo placement — Company/project branding
• Accent colors — Highlights, connections, text

Share Tokens

Secure, temporary links for sharing:

• Expiration — Automatically expire (7 days default, configurable)
• Permissions — View-only or can comment
• Analytics — See who viewed, how long they spent
• Revocation — Can disable link anytime

Next Steps

• Get Started → Getting Started
• Learn Features → Features Guide
• Explore Patterns → Architecture Patterns