The AWS Well Architected Tool should be an everyday developer tool to experience the full benefits provided by AWS. If you’re a developer working on a cloud computing project, I’m sure you’ve heard of the AWS Well Architected Framework: the comprehensive set of best practices and guidelines provided by AWS to design and operate reliable, secure, efficient, and high-performing applications in the cloud. My name is Lucía, I’m a Full Stack Engineer at StackZone and in this article, I will explain why as a developer, the AWS Well Architected tool is invaluable for your productivity, helping you to meet the requirements of the Well Architected Framework.
What is the AWS Well Architected Tool?
The AWS Well Architected Tool (AWS WA Tool) provides a consistent process for measuring your architecture using AWS best practices. It helps to keep you on track to meet the Well Architected Framework. First, you define your workload, then you answer a set of questions across the six pillars of the Well-Architected Framework: Operational Excellence, Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency, Cost Optimization, and Sustainability. The AWS Well Architected Tool then provides a plan describing the improvements that can be applied to the workload. There’s no charge for the AWS Well Architected Tool; you pay only for any AWS resources that you consume. However, the tool is only available in select regions.
Essentially, this tool can be used by developers to measure their implementation of AWS best practices within their cloud infrastructure. It proves recommendations on the opportunities for improvements and overall guides your cloud management decisions.
The benefits of the AWS Well Architected tool
Taking advantage of the AWS Well Architected Tool unlocks the following benefits:
- Expert guidance on achieving AWS best practices.
- The ability to efficiently perform reviews to assess your compliance with the Well Architected Framework.
- Prevented risks by ensuring your applications are secure, compliant, and resilient.
- Optimized cloud costs – The tool helps you analyze your infrastructure and provides insights into cost optimization opportunities.
- Resilience and disaster recovery – The Well Architected Tool assists in designing architectures that are resilient to failures and can recover quickly in case of disasters.
- Improved platform performance – By following the framework’s guidelines, you can design applications for optimal performance. This includes considerations for latency, throughput, and resource utilization, helping you deliver a better user experience.
- Continuous Improvement – The Well Architected Tool fosters a culture of continuous improvement. It enables you to regularly review and refine your architecture based on changing business needs and evolving AWS services.
The purpose of the AWS Well Architected Tool is to increase your compliance with the Well Architected Framework because this framework provides the optimal conditions that developers need. Let’s explore why this particular framework is fundamental to the work of developers.
The importance of the Well Architected Tool for developers
Using the Well Architected Framework provides the optimum conditions for the work of developers. Not only does it maximize security and optimize your cloud budget but you can expect the following day-to-day advantages when you adhere to AWS best practices through the framework, as guided by the Well Architected Tool:
Empowered decisions
There are as many ways to code as there are developers. The Well Architected Tool data analysis is great for analyzing your choices and options as well as for evaluating how a given code/architecture decision can impact your app. This speeds up your decision making time.
Fast solutions at your fingertips
On the topic of saving time, the AWS Well Architected Tool helps you to understand the trade-offs of your decisions. If you feel your application isn’t performant, you may have 10 different possible solutions for improving performance. Each one has a tradeoff, whether it be cost, maintainability, or more. The Well Architected Framework Tool can help your team decide the best option.
A cloud-native perspective
The AWS Well Architected Tool is an optimal way of learning to think “cloud native”, as opposed to having a data center. Absorbing these techniques allows engineers to make loosely coupled systems that are resilient, manageable, and observable. From an operational perspective, you can refine operations procedures frequently to improve things such as running operations as code instead of manually or making frequent, small, and reversible changes. All practices encountered in your daily developer routine.
Understand the failure contingency plan
As a developer, you are in charge of the coding part of “Applying security to all layers” and “Protecting data in transit and at rest”, two major cloud security best practices. Lastly, a very good reason to point out is to know the failure contingency plan. Despite an organization’s best efforts to prevent downtime and avoid compromises, failures will still happen from time to time. So, what is your organization doing about it? The Well Architected Framework will help you identify who you will need to involve with and what you’ll need to do.
How to speed up the implementation of the Well Architected Framework?
To achieve compliance with the AWS Well Architected Framework, StackZone transforms your cloud environment quickly. StackZone is a powerful cloud management platform that creates correct configurations to desired standards related to your industry within hours, to achieve maximum security, continuous compliance and optimized cloud costs. StackZone users achieve an average rate of 74% compliance with AWS best practices. There’s also the option to select self-follow-up on Well Architected Framework compliance to plan continued improvements. Explore the configuration blueprints
Final considerations for developer’s productivity
To fully leverage the AWS Cloud, make sure you and your development team have a strong foundation in the Well Architected Framework. The AWS Well Architected Tool can actively help you monitor your adherence to the framework. To achieve a perfect set up and implementation of the entire Well Architected Framework within hours, the StackZone console is for you. You’ll be able to build better workloads for the cloud that can take your practices to the next level and your business further and faster. To see our platform in action, and understand how it could solve your specific needs, book a free demo.
This article was written by Lucía Seggiaro, Full Stack Engineer
