AWS Well Architected Framework - Introduction
Architecting for your application to run on AWS is a subtle process. Designing the infrastructure is not enough. How secure is your infrastructure? How efficient it is? Is it reliable? These are some questions that must be addressed before moving your application to the cloud. They determine how well architected your infrastructure is.
AWS well architected framework is designed to help in architecting a reliable, secure, and efficient environment. It guides you to leverage the principles defined to get the best solution.
There are 4 major pillars of a well architected framework - Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency and Cost Optimization. All the pillars deal with following the best practices in respective domains.
There is also a recent addition to the framework that is - Operational Excellence.
In this article, we will be discussing these concepts in brief.
Security pillar deals with the protection of information, data, systems, etc. It deals with the protection against various online threats, hacks and breaches. Keeping the environment secure at every level, regularising access in the environment, keeping a watch on the activity and various other security aspects are part of the pillar.
Reliability Pillar - Reliability is a measure of the ability to recover from failures, breakdowns, etc. How quickly you can recover in case of a breakdown depends on how dynamic your infrastructure is.
Performance Efficiency - Making the best use of resources, selecting the right sized resources fall under this pillar. Avoiding over utilization and at the same time preventing underutilization of resources to maintain best performance is the key.
Cost Optimization - This pillar focuses on avoiding extra expenses, and optimizing your expenditure of resources. Selecting the right resources, making efficient use of them, downgrading if possible, and using only when required, are principles to optimize cost.
I have already written some articles on cost optimization -
Operational Excellence - This pillar focus on continuous monitoring, continuous improvements in the operations. Continuous changes to improve for better is the key.
Follow the best practices of all the pillars is the summary of this framework. I will cover these pillars in detail to discuss what are the best practices and how to achieve them.