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Start Here — InfraTales Reading Guide

InfraTales covers production AWS architecture, cost engineering, and infrastructure patterns for cloud and DevOps engineers.

If you're new, here's the best reading path based on what you're trying to solve.

If you're building a new AWS architecture from scratch

1. The AWS Core Infrastructure Stack: VPC, ALB, RDS, and CI/CD in One Coherent Architecture — Start here. The foundational stack.
2. The AWS VPC Foundation That Runs Dev, Staging, and Prod Without Your NAT Gateway Bill Spiralling — Before you touch anything else, get the networking right.
3. Real-Time Video Analytics on AWS: The Architecture That Holds Up in Production — A complete production example with cost and failure analysis.

If you're trying to cut your AWS bill

1. We Cut Our AWS Bill by ₹50 Lakhs a Year — And It Was Entirely Our Own Fault — Start with the honest account of common cost mistakes.
2. Building an AWS Observability Stack Without Paying k/Year for a Vendor — Visibility you can actually afford.
3. Serverless IoT Analytics on AWS: The Architecture That Handles Millions of Device Events Without Breaking the Budget — Cost-optimised event processing at scale.

If you're dealing with security or compliance requirements

1. Zero-Trust on AWS: What BeyondCorp Actually Requires Beyond IAM Policies — What zero-trust actually means in AWS terms.
2. AWS Security Architecture Patterns: Zero-Trust, DevSecOps CI/CD, and CloudHSM in Production — The full security stack.
3. Cloud-Native SIEM on AWS: Architecture Decisions, Cost Model, and What We Would Change — Real-time threat detection without the vendor lock-in.

If you're building data pipelines or ML infrastructure

1. From Raw S3 Events to Production ML: The AWS Architecture Stack That Doesn't Fall Apart at Scale — The full data and ML architecture picture.
2. Real-Time CDC on AWS: DMS, Kinesis, and Glue Without the Operational Nightmares — Change data capture done right.
3. Petabyte-Scale Log Analytics on AWS: Architecture, Cost, and the Decisions That Matter — When CloudWatch isn't enough.

If you're responsible for observability

1. Building an AWS Observability Stack Without Paying k/Year for a Vendor — Start here.
2. APM Without the Vendor Lock-In: Distributed Profiling on AWS With OpenTelemetry — Full APM stack without the k bill.
3. Global Synthetic Monitoring on AWS: How to Know Your Service Is Down Before Your Users Do — Proactive monitoring, not reactive firefighting.

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Every week I publish one production AWS architecture breakdown — what the problem was, how it was solved, what it costs, and what breaks if you get it wrong.

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