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What Is the AWS Well-Architected Framework?

The AWS Well-Architected Framework is a set of five strategic pillars used by the AWS internal team to evaluate cloud systems. Amazon released the architecture to give AWS customers secure and efficient systems on the cloud.

In addition, the AWS Well-Architected Framework provides design best practices across each pillar to ensure users meet the five objectives.

Below is a table that represents the AWS Well-Architected Framework. The table contains the five pillars, what each pillar entails, and one of the design best practices for the pillar.

Pillar

Description

Operational Excellence

Runs development processes effectively. By gaining visibility of operations, users can improve processes to deliver more valuable systems.

Design Best Practice: Design small loads, which you can reverse and update frequently.

Security

Protects vital data, systems, and assets in the cloud.

Design Best Practice: Limit access to data and make sure only authorized people can access certain types of data.

Reliability

Makes each element in a system work productively, efficiently, and consistently.

Design Best Practice: Do a lot of testing and monitor performance KPIs. Set up notifications to track failures. Also, you can automate recovery processes.

Performance Efficiency

Uses cloud resources efficiently.

Design Best Practice: Use a serverless architecture. You save more time, as there are no physical servers to maintain. Serverless architecture could also be a cost-saver.

Cost Optimization

Get the most out of your cloud investment. 

Design Best Practice: Choose the “pay as you go” model as it allows you to pay for the resources that your business needs!

 

nOps is a premium AWS Partner that helps AWS customers meet the AWS Well-Architected Framework. Here’s how:

  1. Operational Excellence: AWS customers can use nOps for deeper visibility into their work processes and operations. It allows you to see the history of app configurations and respond to any change requests. You can get notifications of all changes in your AWS infrastructure.
  2. Security: The nOps notification feature boosts security by letting users respond to urgent needs instantly. Whether it’s disaster recovery or unusual billing. nOps has audit trails to alert users on security risks. In addition, it guides you based on common industry standards, such as NIST, SOC 2, and HIPAA.
  3. Reliability: You can make your cloud apps reliable through nOps alerts. Whenever there are outages, nOps will give an alert and possible ways of recovery.
  4. Performance Efficiency: The nOps tool integrates with other software, such as Jira, to help maximize your AWS assets. The health status of your AWS infrastructure acts as an efficiency meter. The higher the reading is, the better the efficiency. Good efficiency makes sure you get maximum production for every input.
  5. Cost Optimization: nOps has a Spot Instance Advisor that can help you save big on Spot Instance costs. nOps pulls data from Cost and Usage reports to give better visibility of cost centers. You can filter cost reports by date, business units, projects, and much more. A comparison of these costs helps in making data-driven decisions on cost reduction. In addition, nOps helps you track and optimize AWS resources, such as spot instances, EBS volumes, and much more.

To learn more on how to use nOps for the five pillars of a Well-Architected Framework, click here.