Introduction to the AWS Well-Architected Tool

 Introduction to the AWS Well-Architected Tool

In this post, you will learn about the AWS Well-Architected Tool, which helps you review your workloads against AWS recommended practices, and primarily provides you with a plan and guidance on how to improve your cloud architectures. This tool, based on the AWS Well-Architected Framework, upon completing a review of your workload, provides you with a highly valuable improvement plan on a list of risks categorized by severity level aws solutions architect salary.

Both the AWS Well-Architected Framework and the AWS Well-Architected Tool have been updated in the second half of 2020, so we will dedicate ourselves to explaining their relevance in this space.

 

Am I designing and running my applications well in the cloud?

When you design and run applications in the cloud, how often do you ask yourself “am I doing it right”? Actually, this is an excellent question and to get a good answer you can get help using the AWS Well-Architected Framework which we published since 2015 .

 

First ... What is the Well-Architected Framework?

The AWS Well-Architected Framework (or AWS Good Architecture Framework ) is a formal approach to benchmarking your workload against our best practices and getting guidance on how to improve. Today, the Well-Architected Framework offers a consistent way for customers and partners to design and evaluate cloud architectures, based on five pillars:

Operational Excellence - The ability in the organization to support business objectives, as well as its ability to run workloads efficiently, gain insight into its operations, and continually improve procedures and support processes to deliver business value.

Security - The ability to leverage cloud technologies to protect information, systems, and assets while delivering business value through risk assessments and mitigation strategies, in a way that can improve your security position.

Reliability - The ability of a workload to perform the intended function correctly and consistently at the expected time. This includes the ability of a system to recover from infrastructure or service disruptions, dynamically acquire computing resources to meet demand, and mitigate disruptions such as misconfigurations or transient network problems.

Performance efficiency -. The ability to use computing resources efficiently to meet system requirements and maintain that efficiency as demand changes and technologies evolve.

Cost optimization - The ability to run systems to deliver business value at the lowest price point. Through a continuous process of refinement and improvement throughout a workload's lifecycle, you help achieve business results, while minimizing costs and allowing your organization to maximize return on investment.

Since its launch, the AWS Well-Architected Framework has received constant updates. And it is important to mention that in the second half of 2020 there has been an important revision and rewriting of the questionnaire that serves as the basis for conducting the revision of architectures in all the pillars already mentioned.

To provide more workload-specific advice, in 2017 we expanded the AWS Well-Architected Framework with the concept of Lens (“approaches”) to go beyond a general perspective and into specific technology domains. Currently, there are 6 different approaches that you can consult and take advantage of:  Serverless , High Performance Computing (HPC) , IoT (Internet of Things) , Data Analytics , Machine Learning , and Financial Services Industry .

Now, in this publication we will focus on presenting the AWS Well-Architected Tool that has been recently updated along with the AWS Well-Architected Framework.

 

What is the AWS Well-Architected Tool?

The AWS Well-Architected Tool (AWS WA Tool) is a service that we launched in 2018 in the AWS Cloud, available in the AWS Management Console, and that provides a consistent process for ready architecture using AWS recommended practices. The AWS WA Tool helps you throughout the entire product lifecycle:

Providing you with assistance in documenting the decisions you make

Giving you recommendations to improve your workload based on best practices

Guiding you to make workloads more reliable, secure, efficient and profitable