How to Benefit from the AWS Well-Architected Framework

Lately, I have been approached by several IT professionals stating they are frustrated with high cloud spending, as they were promised costs would be lower than traditional infrastructure (Datacenter) costs. Others say they haven’t seen any improvements that would allow them to update their business quickly and better serve their customers. Last but not least, there are those who have felt uneasy about being vulnerable to cyberattacks that can generate financial losses and harm to their customers, in addition to compromising their brand image in the market.

Migrating to the cloud is not a simple task; it requires a lot of planning that goes beyond the technical part (knowledge in migration tools). We can say that 70% of the time is spent understanding the application (technologies used, relationships with other applications, consumption of computational resources), seeking incentives with the partner (yes, as AWS partners, we facilitate your journey to the cloud through the granting of credits), and planning how the migration will be done (the order of execution and how the application will be migrated), and 30% of the time is spent executing the migration.

The AWS Well-Architected Framework helps us in this planning and provides a 360º view of your environment and how it should be architected on AWS. You might ask: if I have already migrated to the cloud, can I benefit from this methodology? The answer is yes, as we employ it ourselves during an AWS environment management contract where we perform recurring architectural analyses — after all, a cloud environment is always undergoing transformations.
AWS Well-Architected is a framework with pillars of architectural best practices that was introduced into our services as described below.

Security

In this pillar, the topic addressed is the foundation of the cloud — that is, what the cloud access methods will be, which user groups will be able to access it, and what permissions they will have to implement and use the more than 200 AWS services.

We implement services that help prevent, detect, and correct security problems automatically, such as preventing a user from creating a public S3 bucket (object storage) that can be accessed by anyone.

Operational Excellence

In this pillar, the topic addressed is automation — that is, how to apply transparent, fast, and effective updates to applications that can be easily rolled back if necessary.

We implement services that facilitate the creation and/or recreation of infrastructure through code (IaC) and DevOps pipelines (CI/CD) that integrate with code repositories and enable the deployment of your application on servers or AWS managed services.

Reliability

In this pillar, as the name implies, the topic addressed is reliability — that is, how resilient your environment is and how it can automatically recover after a failure. We implement services that make the environment scalable (Auto Scaling) and highly available (MultiAZ, MultiRegion, and DR), in addition to change controllers (Change Manager).

Performance Efficiency

In this pillar, the topic addressed is the democratization of technologies — that is, how to experiment with new technologies and benefit from their architectures. We implement services that make it possible to scale globally in minutes and are high-performing and sized according to demand (Serverless).

Cost Optimization

In this pillar, the topic addressed is cloud cost management. We implement services that help identify who is responsible for a particular account, service, and/or resource, whether the computational resources are well-sized (Rightsizing), whether they can be modernized, and whether they can be reserved through commitment contracts (Savings Plans), all through a graphical interface.

We have a team of professionals who hold more than 1000 certifications in various AWS specialties, and we can help you identify and resolve problems in your architecture. We are ready to help you modernize and manage your environment.

References: Partners Amazon AWS