Aws Well Architected in Action

You heard, you learned, you know. But how can you apply? Let’s examine Well Architected Framework in practice.

Earlier we went through AWS Well Architected in theory, examined the reasons behind its establishment and what it is. Well Architected Framework is a combination of best practices and strategies that can be applied in the AWS cloud. You can compare your current practices to best practices defined by AWS.

Then wherever you are suggested to see improvement, you can take necessary actions. Although it had four at its creation, the framework expanded to six pillars as of today, covering: security, performance, reliability, cost effectiveness, as well as operational excellence and sustainability. With knowledge in the topic covered, let’s try to analyze the framework from a practical perspective.

5 Actions to Apply AWS Well Architected:

1- Explore AWS Architecture Center

Consider the Architecture Center as an online library, providing you all the content and the knowledge you need, in order to succeed in your well architected journey. It’s also officially introduced as: “The AWS Architecture Center provides reference architecture diagrams, vetted architecture solutions, Well-Architected best practices, patterns, icons, and more. This expert guidance was contributed by cloud architecture experts from AWS, including AWS Solutions Architects, Professional Services Consultants, and Partners.”

Architecture center is basically a collection of architecture solutions, white papers, introductory videos, diagrams, icons and more. Whatever is your challenge, you will be able to find probably several articles that will give you a hint on your solution. If you don’t have a specific problem, yet want to get inspired from practices of different businesses, you can also filter the resources by the industry type and examine how other companies took a step closer to their well-architected structure.

2- Gain skills at Well-Architected Labs

No doubt AWS architects are also aware that there is a need for every individual to experiment their knowledge on well-architected in some sort of a test playground. Well-architected labs, accessible at wellarchitectedlabs.com is the guide you need, in order to generate your own playground. It is delivered as a repository, and provides empirical, to-the-point practices on how to apply the well-architected framework into your infrastructure.

The officials introduce the project as follows: “This repository contains documentation and code in the format of hands-on labs to help you learn, measure, and build using architectural best practices.

The labs are categorized into levels, where 100 is introductory, 200/300 is intermediate and 400 is advanced”. Indeed, the layout is user friendly and one can easily go through the learning by each category at a time.

3- Self-criticize with Well Architected Tool

Probably the most known step in practice, well-architected tool is accessible in your console, providing you with a set of questions in each category, aiming to bring you a step closer to owning a well-architected infrastructure. In its official page, AWS well-architected tool is introduced as follows: “The AWS Well-Architected Tool is designed to help you review the state of your applications and workloads, and it provides a central place for architectural best practices and guidance.

It is based on the AWS Well-Architected Framework, which was developed to help cloud architects build secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient application infrastructures”. Well-Architected tool allows you to define your scope, then criticise your work with some guidance in the end.

The experience of applying well-architected tool is quite substantial. Before anything, it’s possible to sort the six pillars of well-architected framework, according to your priorities. If security is the most important, you can place it on the top.

If sustainability is part of your cloud strategy, you can add it as the second in the list and so on. Following the pillars, you are asked a set of questions, with each providing you additional info on how to improve your infrastructure on the topic. With answers given, ticking boxes, the tool generates a “lens” that is particularly for your own business and your infrastructure. On top, AWS defines risk levels, providing you first things to begin with on improving your applications to become well-architected.

As a great practice, it is ideal to regularly repeat applying AWS well-architected tool on your projects in regular patterns. This will help to freshen your background on the framework. Besides you will be able to keep the quality of your infrastructure up-to-date, by evaluating the workload from the pillars that are provided to you.

4- Learn more at Well Architected Lenses & Guidance

When you take a look at AWS documentation, lenses are defined as follows: “Lenses provide a way for you to consistently measure your architectures against best practices and identify areas for improvement.

The AWS Well-Architected Framework Lens is automatically applied when a workload is defined”. At first glance, one would think that a lens is simply part of the process that will help you to receive the output after applying well-architected tool on your workload. That is correct, but if we limit lenses to such definition, we would undervalue their importance.

To me a better way to define lenses is to consider them as a horizontal layer of well-architected pillars. Each lens is focusing on a concept, that is covering various best practices on the pillar. Therefore, it is also crucial to evaluate your approach by examining lenses before applying well-architected tool, in order to find out what is already a valuable standard within your industry. Well-architected lenses are published as a white paper, focusing on different concepts.

If you are willing to take it beyond, then examine cases that are even more case-specific, AWS Well-architected guidance is also your to-go-resource. Once you feel confident on your knowledge and practice with well-architected framework, it may not be the most ideal to think that it’s all done, there is nothing more to worry about.

For the periphery of well-architected, guidance is your resource. It’s also collection of white papers that are providing best practices that may not perfectly fit to scope of well-architected, however still relevant.

5- Discuss & brainstorm on Well Architected as a team

Last but not the least, it’s crucial to realize that well-architected framework is not a job of one, it requires the involvement of the entire team in the process. Considering this, there are several steps that can be taken within teams to perceive the philosophy and make great use of it. It’s ideal to follow the official documentation of well-architected, also update the team when there are any improvements on pillars.

Following, AWS is not adding new context or pillars to the framework by random. Recently, sustainability was added as the newest pillar to the framework. Why was this important? What does this mean to cloud, or to our business? Discussing these details with the team, sharing further insight can be helpful in future to be prepared for different requirements or opportunities that you may encounter.

Finally, consider receiving some external support in your well-architected journey from AWS well-architected partners. Once all applied and confirmed, it’s even possible to receive some financial incentive from AWS, providing your business a valuable credit for all the quality you bring in your work.

If you want to know more about AWS Well-architected, have some insight with the history of it and more, feel free to read my other post: “AWS Well-architected in Theory”. Also feel free to share if you have any comments or questions!