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System Design Explainer

Components

The building blocks behind every design, with the default service on each cloud and open-source alternatives. Open one for all the options, when to use it and where it appears.

Edge & networking

ComponentAWSGCPAzureOpen sourceUsed in
DNS / geo-routingRoute 53Cloud DNSAzure DNS+1CoreDNS+1—
CDNAmazon CloudFrontCloud CDN+1Azure Front DoorVarnish+117 systems
Load balancerElastic Load Balancing (ALB/NLB)Cloud Load BalancingAzure Load Balancer+1NGINX+28 systems
API gatewayAmazon API GatewayApigee+1Azure API ManagementKong+227 systems

Security & identity

ComponentAWSGCPAzureOpen sourceUsed in
WAF / DDoS protectionAWS WAF+1Cloud ArmorAzure Web Application Firewall+1ModSecurity+1—
Identity & authAmazon CognitoIdentity PlatformMicrosoft Entra External IDKeycloak+15 systems
Secrets & keysAWS Secrets Manager+1Secret Manager+1Azure Key VaultOpenBao+12 systems

Compute

ComponentAWSGCPAzureOpen sourceUsed in
Application serviceAmazon EKS+1Google Kubernetes Engine+1Azure Kubernetes Service+1Kubernetes+135 systems
Serverless functionAWS LambdaCloud Run functionsAzure FunctionsKnative+14 systems
Real-time connection gatewayAPI Gateway WebSocket APIs+1Self-hosted on GKEAzure Web PubSub+1Socket.IO+116 systems
Media transcoderAWS Elemental MediaConvertTranscoder APIFFmpeg on AKSFFmpeg+12 systems
Workflow orchestratorAWS Step Functions+1Workflows+1Durable Functions+1Temporal+14 systems
WebRTC media server / TURNAmazon Chime SDK+1LiveKit / coturn on GKEAzure Communication ServicesLiveKit+33 systems

Messaging

ComponentAWSGCPAzureOpen sourceUsed in
Message queueAmazon SQS+1Pub/Sub+1Azure Service Bus+1RabbitMQ+13 systems
Event streamingAmazon MSK+1Pub/Sub+1Azure Event HubsApache Kafka+230 systems
Push / SMS / emailAmazon SNS mobile push+1Firebase Cloud MessagingAzure Notification Hubs+1ntfy+122 systems

Storage

ComponentAWSGCPAzureOpen sourceUsed in
Object storageAmazon S3Cloud StorageAzure Blob StorageMinIO+117 systems

Databases & search

ComponentAWSGCPAzureOpen sourceUsed in
Relational databaseAmazon Aurora+1Cloud SQL+2Azure Database for PostgreSQL+1PostgreSQL+326 systems
Key-value / document DBAmazon DynamoDBFirestoreAzure Cosmos DBMongoDB+16 systems
Wide-column databaseAmazon Keyspaces+1BigtableAzure Cosmos DB for Apache CassandraApache Cassandra+28 systems
Search engineAmazon OpenSearch ServiceVertex AI Search+1Azure AI SearchElasticsearch+314 systems
Graph databaseAmazon NeptuneSpanner GraphAzure Cosmos DB for Apache GremlinNeo4j+12 systems
Time-series databaseAmazon TimestreamBigtableAzure Data ExplorerTimescaleDB+12 systems
Vector databaseOpenSearch k-NN+1Vertex AI Vector Search+1Azure AI Search vector search+1pgvector+2—

Caching

ComponentAWSGCPAzureOpen sourceUsed in
In-memory cacheAmazon ElastiCache+1MemorystoreAzure Managed RedisRedis+232 systems

Analytics & processing

ComponentAWSGCPAzureOpen sourceUsed in
Stream processorAmazon Managed Service for Apache FlinkDataflowAzure Stream AnalyticsApache Flink+16 systems
Data warehouse / OLAPAmazon Redshift+1BigQueryMicrosoft Fabric+1ClickHouse+23 systems
Batch processingAmazon EMR+1DataprocAzure Databricks+1Apache Spark+15 systems

Machine learning

ComponentAWSGCPAzureOpen sourceUsed in
ML / recommendationsAmazon SageMaker+1Vertex AIAzure Machine LearningKubeflow+211 systems

Operations

ComponentAWSGCPAzureOpen sourceUsed in
Coordination / configAWS AppConfig+1Self-hosted etcd on GKEAzure App Configurationetcd+24 systems
ObservabilityAmazon CloudWatch+1Cloud Monitoring+2Azure Monitor+1Prometheus + Grafana+34 systems

External services

ComponentAWSGCPAzureOpen sourceUsed in
Maps & geospatialAmazon Location ServiceGoogle Maps PlatformAzure MapsOpenStreetMap + OSRM+22 systems
Payment providerThird-partyThird-partyThird-partyThird-party16 systems
External partner systemThird-partyThird-partyThird-partyThird-party8 systems