Every day, AWS Solutions Architects are helping customers with architecting their systems, and so they have come to learn what does and doesn’t work. These lessons have all been collated to develop the AWS Well-Architected Framework, a collection of best practices for designing and operating reliable, secure, efficient and cost-effective workloads in the cloud.
The framework can be used to provide businesses with a consistent approach to evaluating and benchmarking their cloud architectures against the qualities expected from modern cloud systems. At the same time, the framework can help businesses understand the pros and cons of decisions while building a cloud architecture, as well as identify areas for improvement and potential risks.
The AWS Well-Architected Framework is based on six pillars: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimisation, and sustainability. Being able to incorporate each one into your architecture will help you produce stable and efficient systems, and ultimately ensure the architecture aligns with achieving your overall business goals.
How to achieve a Well-Architected Framework
There are three main steps to take to implement the AWS Well-Architected Framework:
1. Define the workload: When you’re first carrying out a Well-Architected Framework review, it’s important to understand the workload you’re working with. Is it a simple static website or something more complex such as a micro-services architecture bounded by stringent compliance requirements.
2. Carry out an architectural review: After identifying your workloads, it’s time to put them up against the design principles and best practices set out by the six pillars that make up the Well-Architected Framework. This involves asking questions such as, ‘‘how do you monitor usage and cost?’ and how do you mitigate deployment risks?’ Being able to evaluate your workloads under each pillar will help you gain insight into what you should focus on.
3. Apply best practices: Once the evaluation process is over, the final step is to apply best practices using the AWS Well-Architected Tool, which will uncover a list of issues found in your workloads. It’s then important to implement those recommendations to make those improvements.
The case for automation
Achieving a Well-Architected Framework may look like it involves some fairly straightforward steps, but without a strong knowledge of best practices, cloud architecture or running a review, it can be an overwhelming process. It also requires a lot of investment in time – traditionally it can take up to three months – and resources that most businesses cannot afford. Even after the process is completed, businesses are usually left wondering what to do next as there’s often no roadmap or plan of attack, which in itself can lead to serious issues down the track.
That’s why it’s important to partner with providers, such as 6pillars.io, who can help you sail through a AWS Well-Architected Framework Review with ease. 6pillars.io AUTOMATE+ combines the security of AWS-native tools, open source projects and patent pending IP to automate best-practice in AWS. 6pillars.io is built on best-practice automation to detect, protect and remediate AWS misconfigurations that previously left your company exposed to cybersecurity risks or even ransomware attack.
Sign up today to take advantage of our 6-month, non-commercial Proof of Concept (PoC) designed to get you on the tools and enjoy automated best-practice compliance and security of your AWS infrastructure within 30-minute of deployment and configuration.
Reference: AWS Well-Architected.