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name: cloud-platforms description: | Guide for working with cloud infrastructure and services. Use when deploying to cloud, selecting cloud services, configuring infrastructure, or solving cloud-specific challenges.

Cloud Platforms

When to use this skill

Use this skill when:

• Deploying applications to cloud environments
• Selecting appropriate cloud services
• Configuring cloud infrastructure
• Optimizing cloud costs and performance
• Implementing cloud security best practices

Service Categories

Compute

• VMs/EC2: Full control, any workload
• Containers/ECS/GKE: Portable, scalable applications
• Serverless/Lambda: Event-driven, pay-per-use
• Kubernetes: Container orchestration at scale

Storage

• Object Storage (S3/GCS): Unstructured data, backups, static assets
• Block Storage (EBS): VM disks, databases
• File Storage (EFS): Shared file systems
• Archive (Glacier): Long-term, infrequent access

Databases

• Managed SQL (RDS/Cloud SQL): Relational, ACID transactions
• NoSQL (DynamoDB/Firestore): Flexible schema, high scale
• Cache (ElastiCache/Memorystore): Low-latency data access
• Data Warehouse (Redshift/BigQuery): Analytics at scale

Messaging

• Queues (SQS/Cloud Tasks): Decoupled processing
• Pub/Sub (SNS/Cloud Pub/Sub): Event distribution
• Streaming (Kinesis/Dataflow): Real-time data processing

Cloud-Native Design

Principles

• Design for failure (everything fails eventually)
• Use managed services when possible
• Automate everything (infrastructure as code)
• Monitor and alert on all services

High Availability

• Deploy across multiple availability zones
• Use load balancers for traffic distribution
• Implement health checks and auto-healing
• Design for graceful degradation

Security

• Principle of least privilege for IAM
• Encrypt data at rest and in transit
• Use security groups and network policies
• Rotate credentials regularly

Cost Optimization

• Right-size instances based on actual usage
• Use reserved instances for predictable workloads
• Leverage spot/preemptible instances for fault-tolerant work
• Set up billing alerts and budgets
• Delete unused resources

Cloud Checklist

• Service selection matches requirements
• Multi-AZ deployment for availability
• Security groups properly configured
• IAM follows least privilege
• Data encrypted at rest and in transit
• Monitoring and alerting in place
• Cost controls established
• Infrastructure defined as code