Tell HN: Architecture-first approach to cloud deployments

Three years back, I was working as the CTO at a late-stage company where our cloud infra had become too complex.

We were constantly launching in different regions. One of our worst headaches was launching multiple environments - it took weeks. And with acquisitions, we needed to stitch disparate systems together multiple times. We adopted Kubernetes and IaC but still managing deployments across environments was becoming a task. The IaC we were writing was quickly becoming outdated and adding to our tech debt. Our tooling was not standardized and different teams worked on different tech stacks, leading to duplication of effort and slow releases.

To tackle this, we built an "architecture-first" DevOps solution in-house. The core idea was that the architectural documentation should be the single source of truth. Any changes, whether in software or infrastructure, would be made at the architecture level and then cascade down to the environments. This approach promoted consistency, reusability, and a deeper understanding of the overall system design.

But we didn't stop there. We believed that architecture should encompass more than just infrastructure and microservices. Things like alerts, observability, monitoring, CI/CD pipelines, database schemas - all of these should be part of the architectural model. This would allow for a uniform, automated way to set up and manage critical operational concerns across the board.

Our experiment was successful within that organization, so we decided to turn it into a product - Facets.cloud. We got early validation, raised funding, and built one of the largest feature sets in the DevOps space.

However, through conversations with companies of all sizes, we identified two key problems:

1. We had built an overly complex enterprise product, without enough user feedback. 2. Developers, especially those at early-stage startups, needed something more self-service and simple.

So now we are releasing Facets 2.0. The focus is now on quick, clean cloud deployments optimized for the workflows of early-stage startup developers.

While being still 100% committed to our "architecture-first" approach, we'll be stripping down the platform to create something any developer or DevOps engineer can easily use.

I don't have a trial version ready just yet, but I'd love to get your early feedback on the idea. We've also opened up slots for our Beta program, and I'm eager to collect as much user input as possible.

Here's a little more information about the idea - https://www.facets.cloud/facets-for-startups-2