Well Architected Framework

AWS Well-Architected Framework

• AWS Well-Architected Framework:

  • A guide for designing infrastructures that are:
    • Secure
    • High-performing
    • Resilient
    • Efficient
  • Provides consistent approach to evaluating cloud architectures
  • Shares best practices learned from reviewing customer architectures

• Cloud Architects:

  • Engage with decision makers to identify business goals
  • Ensure alignment between technology deliverables and business goals
  • Work with delivery teams implementing solutions
  • Well-architected systems greatly increase likelihood of business success

• Six Pillars of AWS Well-Architected Framework:

  • Operational Excellence
  • Security
  • Reliability
  • Performance Efficiency
  • Cost Optimization
  • Sustainability (added in 2021)

Operational Excellence Pillar

• Focus:

  • Run and monitor systems to deliver business value
  • Continually improve supporting processes and procedures

• Key Topics:

  • Automating changes
  • Responding to events
  • Defining standards to manage daily operations

• Design Principles:

  • Perform operations as code
  • Make frequent, small, reversible changes
  • Refine operations procedures frequently
  • Anticipate failure
  • Learn from all operational events and failures

• Best Practice Areas:

  • Organization
  • Prepare
  • Operate
  • Evolve

Security Pillar

• Focus:

  • Protect information, systems, and assets while delivering business value
  • Risk assessments and mitigation strategies

• Key Topics:

  • Protecting confidentiality and integrity of data
  • Identifying and managing who can do what
  • Protecting systems
  • Establishing controls to detect security events

• Design Principles:

  • Implement a strong identity foundation
  • Enable traceability
  • Apply security at all layers
  • Automate security best practices
  • Protect data in transit and at rest
  • Keep people away from data
  • Prepare for security events

• Best Practice Areas:

  • Security
  • Identity and access management
  • Detection
  • Infrastructure protection
  • Data protection
  • Incident response

Reliability Pillar

• Focus:

  • Ensure workload performs its intended function correctly and consistently
  • Recover from failures and mitigate disruption

• Key Topics:

  • Designing distributed systems
  • Recovery planning
  • Handling change

• Design Principles:

  • Automatically recover from failure
  • Test recovery procedures
  • Scale horizontally to increase aggregate workload availability
  • Stop guessing capacity
  • Manage change in automation

• Best Practice Areas:

  • Foundations
  • Workload architecture
  • Change management
  • Failure management

Performance Efficiency Pillar

• Focus:

  • Use resources efficiently to meet system requirements
  • Maintain efficiency as demand changes and technologies evolve

• Key Topics:

  • Selecting right resource types and sizes based on workload requirements
  • Monitoring performance
  • Making informed decisions to maintain efficiency as business needs evolve

• Design Principles:

  • Democratize advanced technologies
  • Go global in minutes
  • Use serverless architectures
  • Experiment more often
  • Consider mechanical sympathy

• Best Practice Areas:

  • Selection
  • Review
  • Monitoring
  • Tradeoffs

Cost Optimization Pillar

• Focus:

  • Avoid unnecessary costs

• Key Topics:

  • Understanding and controlling where money is being spent
  • Selecting most appropriate and right number of resource types
  • Analyzing spend over time
  • Scaling to meet business needs without overspending

• Design Principles:

  • Implement Cloud Financial Management
  • Adopt a consumption model
  • Measure overall efficiency
  • Stop spending money on undifferentiated heavy lifting
  • Analyze and attribute expenditure

• Best Practice Areas:

  • Practice cloud financial management
  • Expenditure and usage awareness
  • Cost-effective resources
  • Manage demand and supply resources
  • Optimize over time

AWS Well-Architected Tool

• Helps review state of workloads and compares to latest AWS best practices
• Provides access to knowledge used by AWS architects
• Delivers action plans with step-by-step guidance
• Provides consistent process to review and measure cloud architectures

The AWS Well-Architected Framework offers a comprehensive approach to building secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient cloud infrastructures. By following its six pillars and design principles, organizations can evaluate their architectures against established best practices and continuously improve their cloud implementations.