PaaS Playbook

Application platforms as a service are strong defaults for conventional web apps and APIs when teams value simplicity over infrastructure control.

Good fit

PaaS is a good fit for:

• Standard web applications and internal tools.
• APIs with conventional runtime requirements.
• Teams that need fast onboarding and simple operations.
• Systems where platform constraints are acceptable.

Required defaults

Define standards for:

• Runtime versions and buildpacks or container images.
• Environment variables and secret injection.
• Deployment slots or release promotion.
• Health checks and autoscaling configuration.
• Logs, metrics, traces, and alert routing.
• Network access and private connectivity.
• Backup and restore for attached services.

Deployment practices

• Use immutable releases where the platform supports them.
• Use staging slots or preview environments for validation.
• Automate promotion and rollback.
• Keep application config schema consistent across environments.
• Document platform-specific limits before launch.

Watchouts

• Manual console configuration becomes invisible drift.
• Filesystem behavior and process lifecycle often differ from VMs.
• Platform-specific conveniences can become migration blockers.
• Scaling behavior may be simple but still needs load testing.