.NET on AWS Starter Kit
A practical starter kit for building and deploying serverless APIs on AWS.
What Is It?
Ghanavats .NET on AWS Starter Kit is a free, opinionated solution template for starting .NET backend applications on AWS without assembling the application and infrastructure foundations from scratch.
Choose between Clean Architecture and Vertical Slice architecture while keeping the same AWS hosting foundation: ASP.NET Core Minimal APIs running on AWS Lambda behind API Gateway, DynamoDB persistence, and infrastructure defined in C# using AWS CDK.
The generated solution is intended to be understood, changed and owned by the team using it. It is a starting point—not a framework hiding AWS or .NET behind proprietary abstractions.
What You Get
Application foundation
- .NET 10 / ASP.NET Core Minimal API
- Clean Architecture or Vertical Slice architecture
- FluentValidation
- Global exception handling
- Ghanavats Result Pattern
- OpenAPI
- Health checks
AWS foundation
- AWS Lambda
- Amazon API Gateway
- Amazon DynamoDB
- AWS CDK in C#
- IAM configuration and service integration
- API keys and usage plans
Production-focused foundations
- Structured logging
- Lambda SnapStart
- Pre-snapshot application warm-up
- Unit tests
- Architecture tests
- Deployable CDK stacks
Why I Built It
Creating an ASP.NET Core API takes minutes. Getting everything around it ready for AWS takes considerably longer. Lambda packaging, API Gateway, IAM permissions, persistence, CDK, deployment configuration, testing and application structure are problems teams repeatedly solve before they get to the business functionality they actually need to build.
I built this Starter Kit to create that foundation once, make the important decisions explicit, and keep improving it as I learn from building .NET systems on AWS.
It’s also a practical way for me to explore and document the engineering trade-offs behind different approaches rather than presenting one architecture as the answer to every application.
Who Is It For?
This Starter Kit is useful for:
- .NET developers building backend APIs on AWS;
- engineers who want a working Lambda + API Gateway + DynamoDB + CDK reference;
- teams that want a repeatable starting point instead of assembling the same foundation for every project;
- developers comparing Clean Architecture and Vertical Slice approaches;
- engineers learning how application code and AWS infrastructure fit together in a real .NET solution.
It is not a complete production platform.
Every real application still needs its own security, resilience, data modelling, observability, cost and compliance decisions.
Architecture
Clean Architecture
Multiple projects with explicit boundaries between Core, Application, Infrastructure, API, etc.
Vertical Slice
Fewer projects, with feature-related code kept together.
AWS architecture
Both ultimately use:
with CDK provisioning the AWS infrastructure.
Key Design Decisions
Clean Architecture or Vertical Slice**
Architecture is selectable at generation time. Clean Architecture provides stronger explicit project boundaries; Vertical Slice keeps related feature code closer together with fewer projects.
AWS Lambda as the Current Compute Model
The starter kit uses AWS Lambda as the primary hosting model.
Lambda reduces operational overhead, scales automatically, and is often a cost-effective option for APIs with variable traffic patterns.
AWS CDK in C#
All infrastructure is provisioned using AWS CDK.
The goal is to allow developers to create, modify and deploy infrastructure without manual AWS Console configuration.
DynamoDB as the Current Persistence Model
The current Starter Kit deliberately uses a straightforward DynamoDB model so the application flow and AWS integration remain understandable. Advanced access patterns and data modelling should be designed around the application’s actual requirements.
SnapStart and Application Warm-Up
The generated Lambda configuration uses SnapStart together with representative pre-snapshot application requests to reduce startup work for restored execution environments.
API Gateway API Keys
API Gateway API Keys provide a lightweight mechanism for controlling access and applying usage plans.
The API itself does not validate API Keys. Validation is performed by API Gateway before requests are forwarded to AWS Lambda.
Get Started
Install the template:
dotnet new install Ghanavats.DotNetAws.Templates
Then:
dotnet new ghanavats_dotnet_aws_starter \
--name MyCompany.MyProduct \
--architecture clean-arc
Or interact with the template via your IDE.
Then:
Follow the generated README for AWS credentials, CDK bootstrap, deployment and local development.
Source Code
The source code is available on GitHub.
AWS Clean Architecture Repository
Related Projects
Included Ghanavats Libraries
The Starter Kit currently uses Ghanavats.ResultPattern to model expected success and failure outcomes without using exceptions for normal application behaviour.
Current Scope
Areas I’m still exploring
- authentication/authorisation
- event-driven patterns
- additional AWS integrations
- deeper observability
- advanced DynamoDB examples
- CI/CD examples
- stronger automated template-generation verification.
Need this running in production?
The Starter Kit gives you the foundation. Auth, observability, CI/CD, data modelling and cost controls are the parts every real system still needs, and they’re where most .NET teams on AWS lose weeks.
I do that work directly. Two weeks, fixed price, delivered in your AWS account: a production .NET service built on this foundation, with Cognito auth, CloudWatch observability, a CI/CD pipeline, IAM baseline, runbook and handover to your team.
Ghanavats Tech is run by Saeed Ghanavat, AWS Solutions Architect, 20+ years in .NET.
Book a 30-minute technical call → From £6,000. UK-based.
Free and Open Source
The Starter Kit is available under the Apache 2.0 licence. Use it, study it, adapt it and contribute back if you find something worth improving.
Feedback
The project is actively evolving.
Feedback, suggestions and contributions are welcome.