Architecture
The Well-Architected Framework describes best practices to design and run reliable, secure, efficient, cost-effective and sustainable systems on AWS, in six pillars.
Running and monitoring systems to deliver value and continually improving processes.
Key points
- Perform operations as code.
- Make frequent, small, reversible changes.
- Anticipate failure and learn from every operational event.
On the exam
Operations automation, runbooks and small, reversible changes belong to operational excellence.
Protecting data, systems and assets using cloud technologies.
Key points
- A strong identity foundation and least privilege.
- Traceability: log and monitor everything.
- Security at every layer and protection of data in transit and at rest.
On the exam
Least privilege, MFA, encryption and traceability belong to the security pillar.
Making sure a workload performs its intended function correctly and recovers from failure.
Key points
- Automatically recover from failure.
- Scale horizontally to increase availability.
- Stop guessing capacity and test recovery procedures.
On the exam
Multi-AZ, tested backups and automatic recovery belong to reliability.
Using computing resources efficiently and keeping that efficiency as demand changes.
Key points
- Democratize advanced technologies through managed services.
- Go global in minutes.
- Use serverless architectures and experiment more often.
On the exam
Choosing the right instance type and using managed services to gain performance: performance efficiency.
Delivering business value at the lowest price point.
Key points
- Adopt a consumption model: pay only for what you use.
- Measure overall efficiency and attribute expenditure.
- Stop spending money on undifferentiated heavy lifting.
On the exam
Rightsizing, Savings Plans and turning off idle resources belong to cost optimization.
Minimizing the environmental impact of cloud workloads. It is the newest pillar.
Key points
- Understand and measure your impact.
- Maximize utilization and avoid idle resources.
- Use managed services and the most efficient hardware available.
On the exam
Reducing energy consumption and carbon footprint belongs to sustainability.
Well-Architected Tool
AWS WA Tool
A free console service to review workloads against the best practices of the framework.
Key points
- A guided questionnaire per pillar.
- Flags high and medium risks, with an improvement plan.
- Tracks how the workload evolves over time.
On the exam
"Review an architecture against AWS best practices": Well-Architected Tool.