PERF08-BP05 Use various performance-related strategies - AWS Well-Architected Framework (2023-04-10)

PERF08-BP05 Use various performance-related strategies

Where applicable, use multiple strategies to improve performance. For example, using strategies like caching data to prevent excessive network or database calls, using read-replicas for database engines to improve read rates, sharding or compressing data where possible to reduce data volumes, and buffering and streaming of results as they are available to avoid blocking.

As you make changes to the workload, collect and evaluate metrics to determine the impact of those changes. Measure the impacts to the system and to the end-user to understand how your trade-offs impact your workload. Use a systematic approach, such as load testing, to explore whether the tradeoff improves performance.

Common anti-patterns:

  • You assume that workload performance is adequate if customers are not complaining.

  • You only collect data on performance after you have made performance-related changes.

Benefits of establishing this best practice: To optimize performance and resource utilization, you need a unified operational view, real-time granular data, and historical reference. You can create dashboards and perform metric math on your data to derive operational and utilization insights for your workloads as they change over time.

Level of risk exposed if this best practice is not established: Low

Implementation guidance

Use a data-driven approach to evolve your architecture: As you make changes to the workload, collect and evaluate metrics to determine the impact of those changes. Measure the impacts to the system and to the end-user to understand how your tradeoffs impact your workload. Use a systematic approach, such as load testing, to explore whether the tradeoff improves performance.

Resources

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