27 - The Compute Resource Consolidation Pattern (Optimise for Cost!)
Are you running dedicated compute for every tenant, microservice, or application instance — and paying for it? The Compute Resource Consolidation pattern shows you how to consolidate tasks onto shared infrastructure, such as a single AKS cluster with namespace isolation or an Azure SQL elastic pool, to reduce costs and management overhead. This episode explores the key trade-offs: blast radius containment, noisy neighbour contention, scalability profiles, and multi-tenancy strategies. Part of the “Architecting for the Cloud, One Pattern at a Time” series.
Chris walks through how Kubernetes namespaces provide logical isolation between tenants on a shared AKS cluster, how deployment stamps allow independent scaling for high-demand tenants, and how Azure SQL elastic pools apply similar resource-sharing principles to the database tier. The episode also examines security considerations of shared boundaries and how to determine the right consolidation level for your workload — from monolithic consolidation to fine-grained per-tenant isolation — based on SLA requirements, cost targets, and risk tolerance.
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Ever thought about what it takes to host a game in the Cloud? Well, this is the series for you! On the first Wednesday of every month, we explore Cloud Concepts that impact your journey to a connected multiplayer gaming experience! In this first session, we'll play some Minecraft and talk to the concept of a hosted game server.
18 - Tales from the Real World - Defying Gravity.. The magic behind Flight Simulator 2020
What's actually powering Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 — and what can cloud architects learn from it? Chris Reddington takes to the virtual skies over Queensland with former colleague Cam Adams, flying a Cessna 172 from Archerfield aerodrome while discussing the real Azure services behind one of the most technically ambitious games ever made. From CDN-based asset distribution and event-driven live weather to PlayFab game backends and DDoS protection — this is cloud architecture on the fly.
26 - The Pub Sub, Priority Queue and Pipes and Filter Patterns
Chris Reddington and Will Eastbury cover three closely related messaging patterns in one packed episode. They start with the Publish-Subscribe (Pub/Sub) pattern — arguably the most transformative shift in enterprise messaging — where a single producer broadcasts to multiple isolated subscribers via Azure Service Bus topics or Azure Event Grid. Real-world use cases include insurance aggregators, credit check pipelines, and bank account sign-up workflows. From there they move to the Priority Queue pattern, which ensures high-priority messages are processed before lower-priority ones even when consumers are under load. Finally, the Pipes and Filters pattern decomposes complex message processing into a chain of discrete, reusable transformation steps — reducing complexity and enabling independent scaling of each stage. The episode also connects these patterns back to earlier topics like Competing Consumers and Queue-Based Load Leveling, and flags related patterns including Choreography and Compensating Transactions.