Amazon Well-Architected Framework

The Amazon Well-Architected Framework is a proven guide that helps you design not just functional but outstanding cloud architectures At 35x, we use this framework as a quality benchmark to ensure your cloud environment is optimally designed. The framework consists of six pillars that represent fundamental principles for excellent cloud architectures.

The Six Pillars of the Well-Architected Framework

Each pillar of the framework addresses a critical success factor for your cloud environment. Here are the six pillars in detail:

• Operational Excellence
  • Efficient Operations and Automation: We define your infrastructure as code (IaC) to handle deployments in a reproducible, consistent, and automated manner. Automating recurring tasks like deployments, tests, and monitoring increases your team's efficiency and productivity.
  • Comprehensive Monitoring and Logging: Implementing seamless monitoring of your systems with cloud-native monitoring solutions to detect issues early and identify performance bottlenecks.
• Security
  • Strong Identity and Access Management (IAM): Implementing a robust IAM system that precisely controls access to your cloud resources. Multi-factor authentication and "least privilege" are standard.
  • Data Protection and Encryption: Protecting your data both at rest and in transit through comprehensive encryption.
• Reliability
  • Fault Tolerance and Redundancy: Designing your architectures to be fault-tolerant from the ground up with redundancy, availability zones, and auto-scaling.
  • Backup and Disaster Recovery: Implementing detailed backup and recovery strategies as well as disaster recovery plans.
• Performance Efficiency
  • Intelligent Resource Selection: Choosing the optimal compute, storage, and network resources for your workloads.
  • Performance Monitoring and AnalysisMonitoring the performance of your applications in real-time and conducting regular load and performance tests.
• Cost Optimization
  • Cost Transparency and Monitoring: Creating maximum transparency over your cloud costs through cost management tools.
  • Resource Right-SizingContinuously optimizing the size and configuration of your cloud resources.
• Sustainability
  • Energy Efficiency and Resource Conservation: Using energy-efficient hardware and services as well as optimizing resource utilization.
  • Holistic Approach: Integrating sustainability aspects into all areas of cloud architecture.

Cross-Platform Application of the Framework

Although the Well-Architected Framework was developed by AWS, its principles are universally applicable. At 35x, we apply this framework across platforms – whether you are on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, OpenStack, or a hybrid cloud. We adapt the specific implementation to the respective cloud platforms.

• Operational Excellence: Using Azure Monitor and Google Cloud Operations Suite similar to AWS CloudWatch.
• Security: Utilizing Azure Security Center and Google Cloud Security Command Center.
• Reliability: Integrating Azure Site Recovery and Google Cloud Backup and DR.
• Performance Efficiency: Using Azure Advisor and Google Cloud Recommender.
• Cost Optimization: Employing Azure Cost Management and Google Cloud Billing.

Would you like to learn more about our Services ? Here you can find more about our offerings in the areas of Security and Risk Assessment as well as an overview of the tools we use.