How to Build a Cloud Computing Infrastructure (Without Wrecking Your Budget or Security)

If you are wondering how to build a cloud computing infrastructure that is secure, scalable and cost aware, this guide gives you the complete answer in one place. We will walk through strategy, architecture, security, resilience and operations step by step, using real world patterns instead of vague theory, so you can read along until the end and confidently shape an infrastructure blueprint that fits your organisation.

If you ask ten people how to build a cloud computing infrastructure, you will usually get eleven answers, and at least a few of them will start with, “Just spin up some VMs.”

That might have worked in 2015. Today, your cloud infrastructure has to balance performance, cost, security, compliance and global reach. It has to serve real users, in real regions, with real regulations.

This guide walks you through a practical, step by step blueprint for how to build a cloud computing infrastructure that actually holds up in production. We will stay provider neutral, show concrete patterns, and weave in security, resilience and operations from day one.

You can use this whether you are a US based SaaS team expanding into Asia, a regional enterprise modernising legacy systems, or a regulated financial institution that simply cannot afford a data breach.

What “Cloud Computing Infrastructure” Really Means in 2025

Before we draw any diagrams, let us align on terms.

When we talk about cloud computing infrastructure, we are talking about the foundation that your applications run on:

• Compute – virtual machines, containers, serverless runtimes
  
• Networking – virtual networks, subnets, routing, VPNs, firewalls
  
• Storage and data – block or file or object storage, databases, data warehouses
  
• Security – identity and access management, encryption, key management
  
• Observability and management – logging, metrics, monitoring, backup, automation
  

This is different from cloud storage only. You can explore the difference more deeply in guides such as the explanation of the difference between cloud computing and cloud storage, but the short version is:

Cloud infrastructure is the platform that powers your applications. Storage is just one component of it.

It also helps to distinguish Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) from Platform as a Service (PaaS). With IaaS, you manage more of the stack yourself. PaaS abstracts more away. If you are unclear on the differences, it is worth revisiting a breakdown of the difference between Platform as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service before you design your architecture.

Step 0 – Clarify Strategy, Risk and Requirements Before You Build

Most failed cloud projects do not fail because the technology was wrong. They fail because the strategy was fuzzy.

Before touching any cloud portal, answer these questions:

1. Business goals
   
   • Are you trying to launch faster, reduce costs, enter new regions, or meet a compliance requirement
     
   • For example, many governments and enterprises in Asia treat cloud as a core enabler of digital transformation. Singapore’s own government digital transformation journey is a good example of cloud as a policy level tool.
     
2. Workload types
   
   • Are you hosting internal business apps, customer facing SaaS, analytics and AI workloads, or banking and financial systems
     
   • For banking, digital transformation often comes with strict uptime and regulatory requirements, as seen in analyses on accelerating digital transformation in banking.
     
3. Risk, compliance and data residency
   
   • What regulations apply, such as GDPR, PCI DSS, MAS or HIPAA
     
   • Do you need data to remain in a particular region, such as the EU, US or Singapore
     
4. Service levels: RPO, RTO and uptime
   
   • How much data can you afford to lose (Recovery Point Objective) and how long can you be down (Recovery Time Objective)
     

This “Step 0” work may not feel technical, but it is where you decide whether your cloud initiative becomes a strategic success or just another item in the “why our digital transformation failed” post mortem. There is a reason analyses of why companies fail at digital transformation and how not to usually start with strategy, not servers.

Step 1 – Choose Your Cloud Model, Deployment Pattern and Region

With strategy clear, you can decide where and how you are going to build.

Public, Private, Hybrid or Multi Cloud

• Public cloud – fastest to start, rich managed services, strong global reach
  
• Private cloud – more control, sometimes required for strict compliance or data sovereignty
  
• Hybrid cloud – mix of on prem and public cloud, often used by enterprises that are modernising gradually
  
• Multi cloud – using more than one public cloud, usually for risk reduction, negotiation leverage or access to specific best of breed services
  

If you need dedicated control and isolation, it may be worth understanding what private cloud hosting services are and why businesses prefer them in 2025. If you need flexibility and speed, public cloud with a strong IaaS base is often a better fit. A concise overview of the advantages of Infrastructure as a Service can help inform that choice.

For US based teams with users in Asia, hybrid and inter cloud patterns are increasingly common, especially when connectivity and compliance are considered together. Deep dives into hybrid cloud providers in Singapore for US based teams and overviews on inter cloud interoperability can help you weigh those trade offs.

Region Selection

Region choice affects:

• Latency – user experience in your key markets
  
• Cost – pricing differs by region
  
• Compliance and residency – some workloads must stay in a specific country or zone
  

For example, US companies serving Southeast Asia often choose Singapore as a regional hub due to its connectivity, legal stability and high tier data centers. A guide to Singapore cloud VPS for US buyers highlights how region, bandwidth and compliance intersect in that context.

Step 2 – Design a Reference Architecture, Not a Snowflake

Now we translate strategy into architecture.

Instead of ad hoc environments, start with reference architectures that you can repeat and refine. Here are three common patterns.

Pattern A – 3 Tier Web Application on Virtual Machines

When to use:

• Traditional web apps, ERP or CRM systems, or SaaS in early stages
  

Conceptual layout:

• Edge: DNS to Web Application Firewall or CDN
  
• Public tier: Load balancer and stateless web servers in public subnets
  
• Private tier: Application servers in private subnets
  
• Data tier: Managed relational database and cache in private subnets
  
• Management: Bastion host or VPN for admin access, plus management subnets
  

In Asia, you might place this in a tier 3 or higher data center in a strategic hub such as Singapore for better reliability. If you are evaluating facilities, it is worth revisiting what a tier 3 data center actually guarantees, and when more advanced tier 4 or tier 5 data centers might be justified for your business continuity and risk appetite.

Pattern B – Container Based Microservices

When to use:

• Microservice architectures and teams with DevOps maturity
  

Conceptual layout:

• Edge: Ingress controller or API gateway
  
• Cluster: Managed Kubernetes or similar orchestration platform
  
• Services: Stateless microservices packaged as containers
  
• Data: Managed databases, message queues and object storage
  
• Observability: Centralised logging, metrics and tracing
  

This pattern enables more granular scaling and deployment, but it also demands stronger skills in CI or CD, observability and security.

Pattern C – PaaS or Serverless for Lean Teams

When to use:

• Teams that want to minimise operations overhead
  
• Event driven workloads or intermittent traffic
  

Conceptual layout:

• Edge: Hosted API gateway or functions endpoint plus CDN
  
• Compute: Serverless functions and managed app platforms
  
• Data: Managed databases and storage
  
• Workflow: Event triggers wired into CI or CD pipelines
  

For mid size enterprises looking to modernise without rebuilding everything at once, hybrid patterns that mix on prem and cloud, as discussed in playbooks for corporate IT infrastructure in Singapore, can act as a bridge.

The key is to choose one primary pattern per workload and document it, rather than allowing every team to invent their own unique infrastructure.

Step 3 – Secure by Design Networking, Identity and Access

Security is not a final step. It is baked into how you design your cloud infrastructure.

Network Segmentation and Exposure

• Use virtual networks or VPCs with public and private subnets
  
• Place application and data tiers in private subnets and only expose load balancers or edge gateways to the internet
  
• Avoid exposing SSH or RDP directly and use a VPN or bastion host with strict access
  

A Singapore first multicloud playbook such as infrastructure security in cloud computing dives deeper into how regional, regulatory and connectivity concerns shape these choices.

Identity and Access Management (IAM)

• Enforce least privilege for users, roles and service accounts
  
• Use role based access control and central identity providers for SSO
  
• Enable MFA on all admin and root level accounts
  
• Use managed secrets and vault services and never hard code secrets in code, images or configuration
  

Encryption and Compliance

• Encrypt data at rest for storage and databases and data in transit with TLS everywhere
  
• For banking or public sector workloads, expect additional controls. Guides on cloud banking solutions in Singapore and Southeast Asia and government focused clouds like the GCC government cloud in Singapore give a sense of what “good security” looks like in regulated sectors.
  

If you are unsure whether your design really meets the bar, specialised cloud security consulting services in Southeast Asia can be the difference between a compliant, audit ready platform and an expensive remediation six months after go live.

Step 4 – Choose Compute, Storage and Data Services that Fit

Now we decide what to run on this architecture.

Compute

• Virtual machines (VMs) – good for legacy apps, long running workloads and cases where you need OS level control
  
• Containers – excellent for microservices and portable workloads
  
• PaaS or managed app platforms – reduce operational overhead
  
• Serverless – ideal for event driven workloads and spiky traffic
  

IaaS gives flexibility, but you can easily overbuild or overspend. Comparisons of Infrastructure as a Service vendors can help steer you toward the right mix of price, performance and support.

Storage

• Block storage for databases and low latency transactional workloads
  
• File storage for shared file systems or lift and shift applications
  
• Object storage for backups, logs, media and static assets
  

Data Services

• Managed relational databases for OLTP workloads
  
• NoSQL stores and caches for high throughput or low latency data
  
• Analytics and warehousing platforms for BI, ML and reporting
  

Your application patterns matter here. If your roadmap includes heavy SaaS functionality, it is worth understanding common SaaS architectures in cloud computing and broader cloud computing business applications before locking in decisions that are hard to reverse.

Step 5 – Build Resilience, Backup and Disaster Recovery from Day One

A cloud infrastructure that works only on a good day is not production ready.

High Availability and Fault Domains

• Use multi availability zone deployments for critical services where available
  
• For global products, consider multi region active or active or active or passive designs
  
• Map these choices to your RTO and RPO: how long can you be down, and how much data can you lose
  

Backup Strategy

• Implement automated snapshots for databases and critical volumes
  
• Store backups in separate accounts or projects to protect against account compromise
  
• Consider cross region backup if regulations permit
  

A regional view, such as a US IT guide to backup and disaster recovery with cloud providers in Singapore, is often helpful when your users and regulators are not in the same geography.

Disaster Recovery and Testing

• Define clear DR runbooks with step by step instructions for restoring critical services
  
• Test them regularly, not just once a year
  

For many organisations, especially those with lean in house teams, handing off these responsibilities to specialised services such as IT DR as a Service and managed backup services is more realistic than trying to build a 24 by 7 DR practice alone.

Step 6 – Automate with Infrastructure as Code, CI or CD and Observability

Human error is still one of the biggest causes of outages. Automation is how you defend against yourself.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

• Define infrastructure in code templates rather than clicking in consoles
  
• Store IaC in version control, with code reviews and approvals
  
• Use separate environments, such as dev, staging and prod, with the same templates and different parameters
  

Understanding the relationship between IaC and IaaS, as described in discussions of Infrastructure as Code vs Infrastructure as a Service, helps teams choose the right level of abstraction.

CI or CD Pipelines

• Automate build, test and deploy steps
  
• Integrate security scans and compliance checks into the pipeline
  
• Ensure that deployments are repeatable, auditable and reversible, for example with blue or green or canary strategies
  

Observability and Capacity

• Collect metrics, logs and traces for all critical components
  
• Set sensible alerts and on call procedures
  
• Use capacity planning techniques, as in guides to IT infrastructure capacity planning, to avoid surprise resource exhaustion
  

For many organisations, all of this rolls into broader IT infrastructure management services. If you are not planning to build that capability in house, it is helpful to understand what is typically included in IT infrastructure management.

Step 7 – Decide Your Operating Model: In House vs Managed Cloud Provider

You now have a conceptual infrastructure. The next question is: who will run it

Fully In House

• You hire and retain cloud engineers, SREs, security specialists and architects
  
• You operate 24 by 7, keep up with cloud changes and handle audits and incidents yourself
  

This makes sense for very large organisations with strong engineering cultures, but even then, they often co source.

Co Sourcing with a Managed Cloud Services Provider (MSP)

A managed cloud provider can:

• Co design your architecture
  
• Handle routine operations, monitoring, patching and backup
  
• Help you navigate AI workloads, new services and governance challenges
  

If you are deciding between doing everything on your own or partnering, comparisons of managed vs cloud services and which you need and newer discussions on managed vs cloud services for AI model governance in 2025 provide a useful decision lens.

For organisations that want the benefits of the cloud without building a large internal operations team, managed cloud service providers and regional MSPs in Singapore can bridge the gap, especially when you need local expertise in markets like Southeast Asia but your leadership is based in the US or Europe.

How Accrets Helps Global Teams Build the Right Cloud Infrastructure

Everything above holds whether you build alone or with a partner. Where Accrets comes in is helping you actually execute this blueprint, especially if:

• You are a US or European team looking to serve customers in Singapore and Southeast Asia
  
• You need hybrid or multi cloud designs that balance cost, performance and compliance
  
• You would rather have experts handle day to day operations while your team focuses on products
  

Accrets combines:

• Enterprise grade cloud infrastructure through offerings such as enterprise cloud computing solutions and on premise private cloud for sensitive workloads
  
• Connectivity and performance optimisation with enterprise connectivity options and cross border acceleration
  
• Managed cloud operations via our managed cloud service provider offerings, managed IT services, backup and DR
  

For many customers, the path looks like this: we start with a reference architecture and migration roadmap, deploy it using best practices described in this guide, and then take over day to day management so your team can iterate on the business, not the underlying plumbing.

Next Steps: Turn This Blueprint into Your Cloud Infrastructure

At this point, you have seen the complete path for how to build a cloud computing infrastructure:

1. Clarify strategy, risk and requirements
   
2. Choose cloud model, deployment pattern and region
   
3. Design reference architectures instead of bespoke snowflakes
   
4. Bake in security, resilience and disaster recovery from the beginning
   
5. Choose compute, storage and data services that fit your workloads
   
6. Automate everything you can with IaC, CI or CD and observability
   
7. Decide who will operate the platform long term
   

The next step is to tune this blueprint to your context: your markets, your regulations, your legacy systems and your budget.If you would like help designing that tailored architecture, you can fill the form below for a free consultation with an Accrets Cloud Expert for how to build a cloud computing infrastructure, and our team will work with you to map out a concrete plan for the next 6 to 18 months.

Dandy Pradana

Dandy Pradana is an Digital Marketer and tech enthusiast focused on driving digital growth through smart infrastructure and automation. Aligned with Accrets’ mission, he bridges marketing strategy and cloud technology to help businesses scale securely and efficiently.