AWS Well Architected Review

AWS Well-Architected Reviews

Making the AWS Well-Architected framework actionable.

Free AWS Well-Architected Review

Cloudar is among a select few AWS consulting partners worldwide that have been approved as a certified AWS Well-Architected Partner. AWS Well-Architected Partners are able to provide deep AWS knowledge and hands-on experience architecting, building, migrating, and optimizing architectures that follow the AWS Well-Architected Framework.
While the AWS’ Well-Architected Framework is a powerful tool, the framework itself is only a starting point. Cloudar has already delivered dozens of free Well-Architected Reviews helping our customers to obtain actionable insight into their environment’s security, reliability, and performance, as well as their cloud operations and return on cloud spend.
Read more about the AWS Well-Architected review in our FAQ

Schedule your FREE AWS Well-Architected Review now!

Free AWS Well-Architected Framework Review by Cloudar*
Available AWS Service Credit Voucher**

Schedule a Review

* For qualified organizations.
** Applies to qualified projects, for AWS clients who start remediation within 30 days after delivery of the AWS Well-Architected Review.

The Well-Architected Framework

The AWS Well-Architected Framework provides architectural best practices across the five pillars for designing and operating reliable, secure, efficient, and cost-effective systems in the cloud. The framework provides a set of questions that allows you to review an existing or proposed architecture. It also provides a set of AWS best practices for each pillar. Incorporating these pillars into your architecture helps produce stable and efficient systems. This allows you to focus on the other aspects of design, such as functional requirements.

The 5 pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework

Performance Efficiency

Using computing resources efficiently to meet requirements and and maintain efficiency as demand and technology evolves

Operational Excellence

Effectively and efficiently running systems to support business outcomes while continually making improvements

Reliability

Recovering from failures through automation and self-healing and dynamically acquiring new resources to meet demand

Security

Protecting information, systems, and assets while delivering business value through risk assessment and mitigation strategies

Cost Optimization

Eliminating unneeded cost and suboptimal resources while measuring system efficiency and ROI

The AWS Well-Architected Framework helps cloud architects build the most secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient infrastructure possible for their applications. This framework provides a consistent approach for customers to evaluate architectures, and provides guidance to implement designs that scale with your application needs over time.
You can download the AWS Well-Architected framework whitepaper here if you would like to know more about the framework as such.

AWS Well-Architected Review <ins>FAQ</ins>

AWS Well-Architected Review FAQ

Read our AWS Well-Architected Review FAQ to learn more about the AWS Well-Architected Framework and how AWS Well-Architected Reviews are delivered.

What is a Well-Architected Review?

Amazon Web Services has created a set of best practices for running systems in the cloud, which they call the AWS Well-Architected Framework. A Well-Architected Review is a high-level check of a critical workload against the framework.

The review is carried out by a Cloudar engineer who will work through a set of structured questions to establish alignment with AWS’s recommended best-practice. The questions are aligned to the five pillars of the Well-Architected Framework as explained here.

How long does a Well-Architected Review take?

The review itself typically takes two to three hours to complete. You should allow a further two hours to discuss the results and the recommendations.

If we’re completing the review with you in-person and on-site we usually like to arrange these sessions at the start and end of the day respectively. We’ll spend the time between preparing the recommendations and any supporting detail.

Who needs to get involved?

To get the most value from a Well-Architected Review, it is important that all parties that have involvement with the workload can join the review so that we can discuss appropriate options. We recommend the presence of at least one person for each key area.

For a typical workload, this would usually involve the following roles:

Infrastructure Engineer(s)
DBA(s)
DevOps Engineer(s)
Developer(s)
Support Team representation
Security Team representation

Are there any pre-requisites or anything I need to prepare?

Ahead of the review we like to arrange a 30-minute preparatory call to confirm the scope of the workload and talk through the prerequisites. For the review itself, we will ask you to prepare or bring the following:

Any existing documentation on the design of this workload, including architecture diagrams
Access to the AWS account in which the workload resides:

– read only access to the account

– full access to the Well-Architected Review service within the console

– a template IAM policy can be provided to support this

a projector/screen and an HDMI connection
a whiteboard or similar

How many Well-Architected Reviews should/can I do?

You can carry out as many reviews as you have distinct workloads and we recommend that the review for each workload is re-visited every three to six months. There is no limit on how many improvement funding nominations can be requested, but you can only request funding once for each distinct workload.

How much does a Well-Architected Review cost?

A Well-Architected Review is free of charge.

What are the benefits of doing a Well-Architected Review?

AWS is a rapidly evolving platform; new features are frequently released to improve critical factors like security, costs and efficiency. However, the sheer volume of updates coupled with the scale of cloud infrastructures makes it difficult to keep pace.
This prevents you from unlocking the full potential of modern cloud environments. Over time, it risks compromising performance and efficiency, leading to competitive disadvantage and business vulnerability.
Evaluating your systems versus proven best practice is an effective way to address this. Well-Architected Reviews offer clarity and focus in an ever-changing environment, enabling priority areas to be identified and addressed.

The main benefits of a Well-Architected Review are:

Optimise Workloads – identify opportunities to optimise and re-architect workloads to run more efficiently, reliably and cost-effectively
Mitigate Risks – lower or mitigate risks through better understanding as you build or optimise your current architectures.
Accelerate & Invent – discover new services that help you build and deploy workloads and respond faster to opportunities to invent

What does “Remediation” mean?

The Well-Architected Review is based on AWS best practices. “Remediation” refers to improving your workload based on Cloudar’s recommendations aligned with AWS best-practices.

Once the remediation work is done, what is next?

We recommend running a Well-Architected Review every three to six months for each distinct workload. This will allow you to see the improvements, comparing the new review outcomes against the first review, and assess the current status of the workload against evolving best practice.

Why do you need access to my AWS Account?

When scheduling the review, we need to notify AWS and provide them with the Account ID for your nominated workload.

To proceed with the review, we require access to the Well-Architected Review service within your AWS account console. AWS now manages the Well-Architected Review process through the account portal so in order for us to complete the questions and submit these to AWS (and for you to qualify for remediation funding) we must submit these responses on your behalf through your AWS account.

How do I provide access to my AWS Account?

Cloudar can provide template IAM user credentials to allow us to securely review your AWS workloads.

What do I have to do to be eligible for the $5K in AWS credits?

AWS is currently offering service credits up to $5K if you start remediation work within 30 days of a Well-Architected Review. The credits will be applied to the account against which the review was completed.
Cloudar needs to notify AWS that work has started and provides a statement of work that details the remediation work being completed. In order to be eligible for receiving these credits, you must also complete AWS’s customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey.

Where do I find out more about Well-Architected?

You can find lots more information about the Well-Architected Framework, including the main whitepaper, articles and videos on each of the 5pillars on AWS’s website here or get in touch by phone or email if you have any questions regarding a Cloudar Well-Architected Review (+32 3 871 99 66 or sales@cloudar.eu).

How do I book a review?

To arrange your review, fill in the contact form or get in touch by phone or email:

Interested in a Well-Architected Review?

Cloudar's AWS Well-Architected Roles and Responsibilities

Our AWS certified solution architect will work closely with your team to review your workload and will produce a detailed report outlining actionable items, timeframes, as well as provide prescriptive guidance in each of the key architectural pillars.
Analysis of the workload/data collected across the Five Pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework, including any recommendations for remediation
Cloudar will submit a review and analysis document, outlining all findings and recommendations corresponding to Well-Architected framework.

The Well-Architected framework offers a consistent method to selected partners who have the exclusivity of evaluating various architectures for specific use cases, and providing measures for an application’s improvement. With our commitment towards excellence, this instrument is going to be vital in transforming the face of the in-field cloud infrastructure.