Design Labs¶

Design Labs are guided architecture exercises that turn Azure guidance into explicit decisions, testable hypotheses, and review-ready evidence. Each lab is written as an Architecture Decision and Validation Record (ADVR) so teams can compare options, justify a recommendation, and define how the recommendation will be proven or disproven.

What makes a good architecture lab¶

• Starts with a decision question, not a service wishlist. [Documented]
• States business drivers, scope, and non-goals before discussing Azure services. [Validated]
• Compares realistic candidate options and names trade-offs clearly. [Correlated]
• Includes a validation plan, falsification criteria, and operating guardrails. [Documented]
• Connects to the relevant workload guide so the lab can be reused as a blueprint seed. [Inferred]

How to use labs with workload guides¶

Use a design lab first to frame the decision, then use the aligned workload guide to elaborate implementation detail, platform standards, and operating practices.

Practical Journey¶

The Practical Journey is the deployment companion to these design labs: a staged deploy → verify → destroy sequence that walks one sample workload from a public MVP to a resilient multi-region baseline. Use a design lab to frame and justify the decision, then follow the journey stages to see those decisions take shape in a real Azure subscription.

Lab workflow¶

flowchart TD
    A[Decision question] --> B[ADVR sections]
    B --> C[Candidate options]
    C --> D[Recommended option]
    D --> E[Validation plan]
    E --> F[Workload guide alignment]
    F --> G[Implementation and review]

Evidence expectations¶

Use the evidence tags consistently:

• Documented for Microsoft Learn or approved standards.
• Observed for platform behavior seen in deployments or logs.
• Measured for latency, throughput, cost, or recovery numbers.
• Validated for drills, tests, or proof-of-concept results.
• Correlated when multiple weak signals support a conclusion.
• Inferred when reasoning is required across sources.
• Assumed when validation is still pending.
• Unknown when evidence is missing.

See Also¶

• Design Lab Methodology — the ADVR structure every lab follows
• Practical Journey — the staged deployment companion to these design labs
• Workload Guides — the implementation blueprints each lab pairs with
• Patterns — reusable design patterns referenced across the labs

Sources¶

• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/well-architected/