AWS

Prerequisite: This is the executive summary and introductory overview of the Modular Monolith Architecture series. No prior reading is required to start here. Part 0: Executive Summary — How Amazon Prime Video Saved 90% on Infrastructure Costs Answer-first: Amazon Prime Video reduced infrastructure costs by 90% by consolidating their audio/video monitoring service from serverless AWS Lambda/Step Functions into a single modular monolith. This transition eliminated high-frequency state transition fees and S3 network egress bottlenecks, demonstrating that in-memory data processing outperforms distributed microservices for high-throughput workloads. ...

Prerequisite: Before reading this part, please review Part 1: Architectural Decision Framework. Part 2: FinOps Cost Reality - The “Hidden Tax” of Microservices Answer-first: The true cost of microservices lies in hidden infrastructure charges: sidecar proxy memory overhead, cross-AZ data transfer egress fees, NAT Gateway processing fees, and high-cardinality logging ingestion. A modular monolith co-locates processing within the same private subnet and container task, bypassing these multi-thousand-dollar cloud bills entirely. ...

AWS EKS vs ECS: Architecture, Cost & Use Cases (2026) Answer-first: When deciding between AWS ECS and EKS, choose ECS Fargate for speed and zero control plane costs if you lack Kubernetes expertise. Choose EKS if you require the CNCF ecosystem (ArgoCD, Dapr, KEDA) and have dedicated DevOps engineers to manage the $73/month control plane fee. Feature AWS ECS (Elastic Container Service) AWS EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) Control Plane Cost $0 (Free) $73/month (~$876/year) Scalability Good (ASG-based) Excellent (Karpenter ~45s provisioning) Complexity Low (AWS-native) High (Requires Kubernetes expertise) I’ve run both in production. At Vigo Retail, I architected a 21-service Go microservices platform on EKS handling 8,000 RPS peak and 25M+ requests/month. I’ve also managed ECS clusters for smaller AWS-native projects. This guide is what I wish existed before I made those decisions. ...

Answer-First: The post-exclusivity AI ecosystem shifts enterprise competition from raw model hosting to agent runtime control planes. Multi-cloud Bedrock distribution combined with Anthropic MCP expansion establishes state management, tool authorization, session telemetry (AgentOps), and audit logging as the primary architectural differentiators for production AI deployments. Tech Radar, April 30, 2026: The First 24 Hours of Post-Exclusivity AI — Multi-Cloud Access, Agent Runtime Control, and MCP Expansion The most important AI market signal of the last 24 hours is not a single model launch. It is the speed at which the ecosystem reacted once OpenAI’s Microsoft exclusivity ended (joint announcement, April 27). In one day, AWS converted OpenAI’s new multi-cloud freedom into a Bedrock distribution product (Amazon, April 28), while Anthropic pushed Model Context Protocol further into the creative software stack. ...

Answer-First: AWS expands Amazon Bedrock with managed OpenAI models, native Codex coding agent runtimes, and Bedrock Managed Agents. This multi-cloud expansion integrates OpenAI intelligence into AWS enterprise governance, including IAM role delegation, PrivateLink connectivity, CloudTrail audit logging, and existing AWS financial commitments. Tech Radar, April 29, 2026: AWS and OpenAI Expand Bedrock — Models, Codex, and Managed Agents Turn Multi-Cloud into a Product One day after OpenAI rewrote its partnership with Microsoft, Amazon moved immediately to capitalize on the opening. On April 28, 2026, AWS announced a major expansion of its OpenAI partnership (Amazon announcement, OpenAI announcement): the latest OpenAI models are now coming to Amazon Bedrock in limited preview, Codex is coming to Bedrock, and Amazon Bedrock Managed Agents powered by OpenAI are launching as well. ...

Answer-First: The end of OpenAI-Microsoft exclusivity shifts AI deployment strategies toward multi-cloud architectures, flexible model routing, and cloud-agnostic agent infrastructure. Tech Radar, April 28, 2026: OpenAI and Microsoft End Exclusivity — The Cloud War Enters Its Multi-Cloud Phase OpenAI and Microsoft have just restructured the partnership that defined the first commercial era of generative AI. The amended agreement, announced on April 27, 2026 (OpenAI statement, Microsoft statement), removes Microsoft’s exclusivity over OpenAI models and products while preserving Azure as OpenAI’s primary cloud partner. ...