Lenses - AWS Well-Architected Tool

We have released a new version of the Well-Architected Framework. We also added new and updated lenses to the Lens Catalog. Learn more about the changes.

Lenses

Lenses provide a way for you to consistently measure your architectures against best practices and identify areas for improvement. The AWS Well-Architected Framework Lens is automatically applied when a workload is defined.

A workload can have one or more lenses applied. Each lens has its own set of questions, best practices, notes, and improvement plan.

There are two kinds of lenses that can be applied to your workloads: Lens Catalog lenses and Custom lenses.

  • Lens Catalog: Official lenses that are created and maintained by AWS. The Lens Catalog is available to all users and does not require any additional installation to use.

  • Custom lenses: User-defined lenses that are not AWS official content. You can create custom lenses with your own pillars, questions, best practices, and improvement plans, as well as share custom lenses with other AWS accounts.

Five lenses can be added at a time to a workload, with a maximum of 20 lenses applied to one workload.

If a lens is removed from a workload, the data associated with the lens is retained. The data is restored if you add the lens back to the workload.