FOGHORN CONSULTING
AWS WELL ARCHITECTED REVIEW
Amazon Web Services (AWS) publishes their best practices and has historically performed Well Architected Reviews for key customers. We are excited to offer this service to new and existing customers because of the incredible positive impact it can have on the benefit our customers get from public cloud.
A Well Architected system benefits operations, security, reliability, performance, cost optimization, and sustainability. Each of these areas can be improved considerably by architecting your workloads to take advantage of cloud infrastructure providers like AWS.
COMPLIMENTARY AWS
WELL ARCHITECTED REVIEW‡
‡For AWS workloads that qualify based on Foghorn’s review of the environment.
What Does “Well Architected” Mean?
The term ‘well architected’ means that your AWS system’s architecture was crafted using the best practices noted by Amazon in their Well Architected Framework. It includes several constructive checkpoints for developers to follow when constructing cloud-based architecture, each of which are intended to increase the likelihood of business success. The framework also signifies that its practitioner is up-to-date on the most recent changes to the AWS ecosystem.
OPERATIONS
Run and monitor systems to deliver business value, and continually improve processes and procedures. Key topics include managing and automating changes, responding to events, and defining standards to successfully manage daily operations.
SECURITY
Protect information and systems. Key topics include confidentiality and integrity of data, identifying and managing who can do what with privilege management, protecting systems, and establishing controls to detect security events.
RELIABILITY
Focus on the ability to prevent and quickly recover from failures to meet business and customer demand. Key topics include foundational elements around setup, cross project requirements, recovery planning, and how we handle change.
PERFORMANCE EFFICIENCY
Use IT and computing resources efficiently. Key topics include selecting the right resource types and sizes based on workload requirements, monitoring performance, and making informed decisions to maintain efficiency as business needs evolve.
COST OPTIMIZATION
Avoid un-needed costs. Key topics include understanding and controlling where money is spent, selecting the most appropriate and right number of resource types, analyzing spend over time, and scaling to meet business needs without overspending.
SUSTAINABILITY
Focus on running cloud workloads while reducing environmental impacts. Key topics include minimizing energy consumption and improved efficiency, a shared responsibility model for sustainability, improving utilization, and understanding impact.
SEE IF YOU ARE ELIGIBLE FOR A COMPLIMENTARY AWS WELL ARCHITECTED REVIEW
An AWS Well Architected Review is pretty painless, but requires involvement from both business and technical stakeholders. It is performed on a workload-by-workload basis. We usually start with a 2-4 hour workshop where we run through a provocative list of questions. Bring your architecture diagrams, they will be pinned up on the wall and relied on heavily! If you don’t have them, no worries, we’ll work our way through it anyway.
We then take away a bunch of information, and sometimes some read-only credentials if you’d like us to take a look in the account and make sure the info we gather is in line with reality. We compile the information into 2 main deliverables: 1) Detailed Score Card, and 2) Remediation Recommendations. The remediations are your roadmap to becoming Well Architected. Get started today!
