As the public cloud has matured, providers have been able to utilize years of experience designing and reviewing cloud architectures for scores of companies.
At AWS, all this learning has inspired the creation of the AWS Well-Architected Framework, a set of key concepts, design principles, and architectural best practices for building cloud environments.
There are five main components of this framework:
1. Operation excellence in how systems are run and monitored so they deliver business value
Focus on automating changes, responding to events quickly, and defining standards to manage operations.
2. Security systems to protect information and assets via risk assessments and mitigation strategies
Apply measures for the confidentiality and integrity of data, practices like privilege management, and establish controls to detect security events.
3. Reliability measures so that service disruptions can be recovered from quickly, and common errors like misconfigurations and transient network issues can be avoided
Create a distributed system design, a robust recovery plan, and widespread agreement about how to handle problems or changes.
4. Performance efficiency in IT and computing resources
Select the right resource types and sizes for workloads, monitoring performance on an ongoing basis and making informed decisions based on data.
5. Optimization to avoid unnecessary costs and deliver the highest business value
Understand and control how you’re spending money in the cloud, identify the right resources for your needs, keep tabs on your spend over time, and scale without overspending.
Hitting the mark with the AWS Well-Architected Framework
While each of these components—and the numerous steps involved—requires extensive time and resources when done in-house, the workload can be made much easier for IT teams by utilizing a tool like CloudHeath.
With CloudHealth, you have access to a full suite of cloud architecture tools that align with every component of the AWS Well-Architected Framework.
Tor achieve operational excellence, CloudHealth offers access to a Cloud Center of Excellence team to help you determine KPIs and monitor your overall cloud health via the Health Check Pulse Report.
On the security front, CloudHealth’s default security policy mirrors AWS and CIS Best Practices for finding security gaps and implementing automated remediations, and security events are automatically logged in both a security risk exposure summary and open ports report. In addition, incidents can be reported with Alert Logic Cloud Defender, and compliance beyond threat detection can be provided by CloudHealth Secure State.
For the reliability component, CloudHealth offers an array of reports that can be subscribed to and a fully customized dashboard for visibility. CloudHealth also complies with AWS Config rules, allows you to enable AWS CloudTrail, and integrates with other tools like Chef and Ansible for IT deployment guardrails.
Performance efficiency is provided by CloudHealth’s right-sizing recommendations, along with robust instance and volume right-sizing policies. Each of these recommendations and policies are customizable for your business needs.
This finally brings us to optimization, the component CloudHealth is known for and that makes it the solution of choice for cloud financial management. Services for optimization include: interactive cost reports, custom dashboards with granular visibility, the ability to save money on EC2 RI, and the optimization of future costs via RI and savings plans recommendations.
A well-architected cloud is a happy cloud
The AWS Well-Architected Framework has been meticulously researched and designed to help organizations both new to the cloud and already comfortable with the platform to get the most out of their investment while still ensuring proper governance and security.
By using CloudHealth, you can easily—and through a single tool—follow all the components in the framework to achieve efficiency and control your cloud spend.
To learn more about migrating to AWS or how CloudHealth can support your business in the cloud, schedule some time to talk with our experts.
