The AWS Well-Architected Framework

The AWS Well-Architected Framework documents a set of foundational questions that enable you to understand how a specific architecture aligns with cloud best practices. The framework provides a consistent approach for evaluating systems against the qualities that are expected from modern cloud-based systems. Based on the state of your architecture, the framework suggests improvements that you can make to better achieve those qualities.

By using the framework, you learn architectural best practices for designing and operating reliable, secure, efficient, and cost-effective systems in the cloud. It provides a way for you to consistently measure your architectures against best practices and identify areas for improvement. The framework is based on six pillars: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, and sustainability.

When designing a workload, you make trade-offs between these pillars based on your business needs. These business decisions help drive your engineering priorities. In development environments, you might optimize to reduce cost at the expense of reliability. In mission-critical solutions, you might optimize reliability and be willing to accept increased costs. In ecommerce solutions, you might prioritize performance, since customer satisfaction can drive increased revenue. Security and operational excellence are generally not traded off against the other pillars.

For much more information on the framework, visit the AWS Well-Architected website.