Having well- architected systems greatly increases the plausibility of business success which is why aws created the aws well-architected framework.

This framework is composed of 5 pillars that help you understand the pros and cons of decisions you make while building cloud architectures and systems on the AWS platform.

use the architectural best practices for designing and operating reliable, cost-effective and secure systems in the cloud using the framework.

It also provides a way to consistently measure your architectures against best practices and identify areas for improvement.



The 5 Pillars of AWS Well-Architected Framework are as follows:

Operational Excellence

Security

Reliability

Performance Efficiency

Cost Optimization



1.)Operational Excellence



The ability to support the development and run workloads effectively, while gaining insight into operations, and continuously improve processes and procedures to deliver business value.


There are three best practice areas and tools for operational excellence in the cloud:


Prepare - AWS Config

Operate - Amazon CloudWatch

Evolve - Amazon Elasticsearch Service


You can find prescriptive guidance on implementation in the

Operational Excellence Pillar Whitepaper.



There are five design principles for operational excellence in the cloud which are explained below.



the five Design Principles





1.)Perform operations as code:

Limit human error and enable consistent responses to events.


2.)Make frequent, small, reversible changes: Make changes in small increments that can be reversed if they fail.


3.)Refine operations procedures frequently: As workloads evolve, procedures should evolve along with it.


4.)Anticipate failure: Test on failure scenarios and identify potential sources of of failure.


5.)Learn from all operational failures: Learn from all operational events that fail and share them across your organization.



2.)Security



Security of the cloud and in the cloud is a big concern.


Security should be designed to provide complete data protection while maintaining privileges to AWS accounts and infrastructure as well as identifying any security breaches with Detective Controls.


The security pillar encompasses the ability to protect data, systems and assets to take advantage of cloud technologies to improve your security.


You can find prescriptive guidance on implementation in the Security Pillar Whitepaper.



the seven Design Principles





1.)Implement A strong identity foundation:

Providing the least required permission and enforce separation of duties through.


2.)Enable traceability: Monitor, alert, and audit actions.


3.)Apply security at all layers:

Utilize multiple security controls.


4.)Automate security practices:

Automated security mechanisms to improve

security, scale more rapidly and be more cost effective.


5.)Protect data in transit and at rest:

Segregate data into sensitivity levels and use encryption and access control for data protection.

6.)Keep people away from data:

Eliminate the need for direct access or manual processing of data.

7.)Prepare for security events:

Create incident management and investigation policy




3.)reliability



The reliability pillar encompasses the ability of a workload to perform it's intended function correctly and consistently when it's expected to. this includes the ability to operate and test the workload through it's total lifecycle. The paper provides in-depth, best practice guidance for implementing reliable workloads on AWS.


You can find prescriptive guidance on implementation in the Reliability Pillar Whitepaper.



the five Design Principles





1.)Automatically recover from failure:

Use key performance indicators (KPIs)to automatically trigger a certain action when a threshold is breached.


2.)Test recovery procedures:

Use automation to simulate different failures and test recovery procedures.


3.)Scale horizontally to increase aggregate workload ability:

Distribute requests across multiple, smaller resources to reduce failure. Use ELB


4.)Stop guessing capacity:

Use auto-scaling to automate the addition or removal of resources


5.)Manage change in automation:

Changes to the infrastructure should be made using

automation.



4.)performance efficiency



Performance Efficiency includes the ability to use compute resources in an efficient manner while maintaining performance with changing workloads.


It requires continuous monitoring to ensures that you are aware of how the workload changes.


What trade-offs must be made while architecting to improve performance efficiency?


You can find prescriptive guidance on implementation in the Performance Efficiency Pillar Whitepaper.



the five Design Principles





1.)Democratize advanced technologies:

Make advanced technology implementation easier for your team by delegating complex tasks to your cloud vendor.


2.)Go global in minutes:

Deploying your workload in multiple AWS Regions around the world allows you to provide lower latency and a better experience for your customers at minimal cost.


3.)Use serverless architectures:

Remove the need for you to run and maintain physical servers.


4.)Experiment more often:

Carry out comparative testing using different types of instances, storage, or configurations.



5.)Consider mechanical sympathy:

Use the technology approach the aligns best with your goals



5.)cost optimization



A cost-optimized workload fully utilizes all resources, achieves an outcome at the lowest possible price point, and meets your functional requirements.


Cost optimization is a continual process of refinement and improvement over the span of a workload’s lifecycle. It can help you build and operate costaware workloads that achieve business outcomes while minimizing costs and allowing your organization to maximize its return on investment



the five Design Principles





1.)Implement cloud financial management:

Utilize Cloud Financial Management/Cost Optimization to become a cost-efficient organization.


2.)Adapt a consumption model:

Pay only for the resources that you use, increase or decrease resources depending on business requirements.


3.)Measure overall efficiency:

Monitor to know the gains you make from increasing

output and reducing costs.


4.)Stop spending money on undifferentiated heavy lifting:

AWS manages data center operations like racking, stacking and powering the servers.


5.)Analyze and attribute cost expenditure:

Accurately identify the usage and cost of systems.

This provides transparent attribution of IT costs to

individual workload owners.



The 5 Pillars Of AWS Well-Architected Framework



Build secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient infrastructure