Best Practices
A curated repository of battle-tested patterns, configurations, and methodologies for modern engineering teams.
Cloud Architecture
- Immutable Infrastructure
Treat servers as disposable. Never SSH into production to fix bugs; patch the code, rebuild the image, and redeploy.
- Multi-AZ by Default
Design systems to tolerate the destruction of an entire availability zone without impacting end-user latency.
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
All AWS, GCP, and Azure resources must be codified in Terraform or OpenTofu. Click-Ops in the console is strictly forbidden.
CI/CD Patterns
- Trunk-Based Development
Merge directly to main frequently. Avoid long-lived feature branches to prevent resolving massive merge conflicts.
- Zero-Downtime Deployments
Utilize Blue/Green or Canary deployments. Users should never experience a 503 error during an application upgrade.
- Ephemeral Environments
Every Pull Request should automatically spin up an isolated, temporary replica of production for integration testing.
SecOps & Identity
- Dynamic Secrets
Stop using static `.env` files. Implement HashiCorp Vault to lease short-lived database credentials that expire automatically.
- Shift-Left Security
Scan Dockerfiles for vulnerabilities and run SAST checks directly in the GitHub Action pipeline before merging.
- Principle of Least Privilege
IAM roles must only have permissions they explicitly require. Avoid `*` access paths in production environments.
Observability
- Structured Logging
Ensure all server logs are exported in JSON format to support indexing in Elasticsearch or Datadog.
- Meaningful Alerts
Alerts should trigger PagerDuty only when a user-facing symptom occurs (e.g., Error Rates > 1%), avoiding CPU-spike noise.
- Distributed Tracing
Propagate Trace-IDs through all HTTP microservices. This drops Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) critically.