AWS WAF: The foundation of successful cloud architecture

To mitigate errors and complexity in cloud design and implementation, AWS offers the Well-Architected Framework (WAF)

Designing and implementing cloud solutions is complex and leaves room for error given the range of services required to mix and merge to create the perfect tailored solution.  To mitigate this, AWS offers the Well-Architected Framework (WAF), a set of key concepts, design principles, and architectural best practices for designing and running workloads in the cloud.

The six built-in pillars– operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimisation, and sustainability – create a framework for cloud specialists to deliver secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient infrastructure for various applications and workloads. BBD is a Well-Architected partner, among other AWS partner designations. As a Well-Architected partner, we follow a Well-Architected Framework-first approach to delivery, embedding best-of-breed practices in our cloud solutions to ensure that we’re always meeting the highest level of reliability.

Well-Architected Tool

Based on the Framework, the AWS Well-Architected Tool is designed to help you review the state of your applications and workloads, providing a central place for architectural best practices and guidance.

This tool provides a consistent process for measuring architecture against best practices, the ability to document all decisions made and recommendations for making workloads more reliable, secure, efficient, and cost-effective.

Well-Architected Lenses

AWS Well-Architected Lenses aid in gaining a deeper insight into specific industry and technological domains. Cloud engineers may apply the tool’s lenses to measure architectures against best practices and identify improvement areas. Such lenses include hybrid networking, machine learning, data analytics, high-performance computing (HPC), IoT, streaming media, and many more. Additionally, you can define custom lenses to set out tailored best practices, whether for a particular technology or to meet the governance requirements within your organisation.

To fully evaluate workloads, the applicable lense/s should be coupled with the AWS Well-Architected Framework and its six pillars to generate the best output.

Benefits of applying the Framework

The Well-Architected Review, which a solutions architect conducts, entails a series of questions about the clients’ cloud environment to assess how their current cloud architecture compares to the Framework’s best practices. A review of this nature will identify pressing issues with cost, performance, reliability, operations, and security in need of attention.

Once completed, the output will indicate High-Risk Issues (HRIs) that engineering teams should remediate. Through these remediations, the AWS environment and architecture will be better aligned to the Well-Architected Framework, ensuring their cloud architecture performs optimally.

BBD’s cloud expertise

Adopting and following the Well-Architected Framework allows BBD’s clients to reap the benefits of faster build and deployment timeframes, lowered risk, consistency in approach and continuous improvement to their cloud solution. Backed by an extensive understanding of a range of tools and technologies, as well as the depth of experience across the industry spectrum, our cloud experts have the know-how to devise and deliver scalable, secure and highly available cloud solutions for organisations of any shape and size.

Find out how BBD’s professional cloud services can assist deploying and migrating new or existing workloads into the cloud, including reviews and remediation. Or, check out our full suite of cloud enablement services, where we offer end-to-end services to help our clients through the entire cloud adoption journey, including planning, migrating, managing and optimising cost and utilisation.