Discover more about AWS Well Architected Framework, its key benefits and better understand its 6 important pillars in our article!

Introduction

AWS (Amazon Web Services) well architected framework is considered a guideline in cloud computing activities. It is built on 6 main pillars and serves as a perfect solution to enhance security and performance at work, helping evaluate architecture thoroughly and scale over time (according to Amazon).

So what is this framework really? How does it help optimize ecommerce operations across platforms? What are the 6 main pillars on which the AWS well architected framework is built?

The article below will help you answer those questions.

Overview about AWS Well Architected Framework

The AWS well architected framework serves as a blueprint for building and improving secure, high-performance, efficient, and flexible architectural blocks. It is built on 6 main pillars, providing specific and consistent approaches so users can easily assess the scale of the architecture to be deployed, as well as the direction of change over time if necessary.

By answering the questions posed by the AWS well architected framework, you can determine the level of compatibility between the architectural blocks your ecommerce business is operating in the cloud and also the AWS cloud migration process, as well as receive Specific instructions to further improve the optimization speed of your digital stores.

AWS well architected framework includes the following key components:

• 6 main pillars: the main pillars of the AWS well architected framework include Operational Excellence, Security, Resilience, Performance Efficiency, Cost Optimization, and Reliability. Each pillar in this AWS well-architected review represents a fundamental aspect of the overall system, providing specific practices and guidance to optimize the performance of that area.
• Design principles: include basic principles and guidelines, with concepts such as automation, elasticity or disposability. They help developers better understand the scalability, feasibility of change, and fault tolerance of the overall platform.
• Key questions: provide a set of key questions related to the organization’s building structure and workload. They help business owners specifically determine the current position of digital stores, factors that need improvement and risks that still exist in the system.
• Best practices: provides best practices to solve problems and challenges, corresponding to each pillar and the actual operating situation of the business with cloud computing. They are built from experience working with thousands of AWS customers on cloud architectures.
• Managing emerging risks: the AWS well architected framework provides specific guidance on risks that may be encountered when operating on cloud platforms. Some of the information included will be on how to identify and mitigate possible risks across all aspects of the framework.
• Overview of workloads: AWS provides a Well-Architected Review (WAR process), which allows organizations to evaluate workloads at a glance based on best practices. AWS well architected framework experts will accompany customers to review the architecture they are operating, identify problems, and provide solutions to optimize workloads.

6 Pillars of AWS Well Architected Framework: What Are They?

AWS well architected framework is built based on 6 main pillars that are really strong and can help enhance your ecommerce business as much as possible.

Operational Excellence

Operational excellence of AWS well architected framework focuses on helping ecommerce businesses optimize their operations and workload. It ensures efficiency, safety and performance, while continuously improving business processes and procedures in operations and development on digital platforms. The importance of automation, monitoring and resources to streamline operations and maximize productivity is emphasized in this pillar, according to AWS well-architected review.

Its design principles include:

• Proactive monitoring
• Automation
• Related document
• Continuous improvement
• Scalability and resilience

This pillar will deploy infrastructure as code (IaC) to automate provisioning and deployment processes, establish monitoring mechanisms and necessary alerts to promptly detect errors. It also documents configurations and processes to facilitate the integration of new technologies, aiming to seamlessly scale the ecommerce business. Operational excellence increases flexibility and efficiency in the day-to-day operations of an ecommerce business.

Performance Efficiency

Performance efficiency in the AWS well architected framework emphasizes the importance of optimizing resource utilization processes. It helps meet the needs of handling workloads effectively, while adapting to changing needs and advances in technology.

Its design principles include:

• Ability of extension
• Resource optimization
• Caching
• Parallelize the development process
• Elasticity

This approach of AWS well architected framework leverages flexibility to automatically scale resources based on the unique needs of your ecommerce business, to expand design capabilities to accommodate different traffic patterns, and cost optimization. At the same time, this pillar also highlights the process of implementing caching mechanisms to improve response times for ecommerce businesses, speeding up processing tasks across multiple resources to improve responsiveness of the overall system of digital stores.

Security

Security is a particularly important factor for every ecommerce business. This pillar provides guidance and best practices to ensure your digital store’s overall systems are protected from technical vulnerabilities, unauthorized access and piracy of news. It includes a comprehensive approach to security, protecting identity, enhancing access, and meeting cybersecurity-related laws.

Its design principles include:

• Protection in depth
• Data encrypt
• Auditing capabilities
• Automation

Least privilege

Security pillar of AWS well architected framework applies an in-depth security approach with multiple layers of security controls to protect ecommerce businesses from various threats in the network environment. At the same time, it uses automation to proactively deploy security policies in a consistent way and to respond to security incidents. This also protects important information from unauthorized access and allows business owners to respond to security incidents that arise as quickly as possible.

Resilience

Resilience plays an important role in helping businesses grow rapidly in the AWS environment, ensuring the system can withstand and recover from a series of incidents without interruption. This pillar of AWS well architected framework ensures that ecommerce businesses have the ability to recover quickly and are ready to face basic errors to recover after a period of downtime due to technical errors.

Its design principles include:

• Fault isolation
• Ability of extension
• Automatic monitoring
• Redundancy
• Automation

This pillar is deployed using a microservices architecture to reduce the scope for errors, preventing cascading errors. At the same time, you will also gain knowledge on leveraging automation to detect and respond to errors, allowing for rapid recovery and reducing downtime. It also enables the deployment of comprehensive monitoring and alerting services to quickly identify and respond to anomalies on a business’s ecommerce website when using the AWS well architected framework.

Cost Optimization

Cost optimization pillar helps ecommerce businesses minimize unnecessary costs, maximize the value of investments and bring about effective results for businesses with the lowest possible costs.

Its design principles include:

• Suitable for business size
• Pay-per-Use
• Reserved capacity
• Resource tagging

With this pillar of AWS well architected framework, you can apply a payment model based on the service you use and actual consumption, without having to pay on a wasteful overall plan. You can also keep a close eye on the usage of your resources, as well as secure discounted pricing options to minimize operating costs.

Reliability

The reliability pillar ensures cloud computing platforms operate reliably, meet demand and build customer loyalty. It focuses on designing architectures that quickly recover from failures, handle interruptions automatically and quickly, and ensure stable performance.

Its design principles include:

• Automatically scale
• Monitor
• Fault tolerance
• Redundancy
• Fix error

The reliability pillar of AWS well architected framework focuses on designing systems that are fault-tolerant, using techniques such as load balancing or failover mechanisms. It helps maintain service availability throughout the process of resolving service failures. 

At the same time, reliability also ensures the ability to proactively detect and respond to serious errors during the operation of ecommerce businesses. Customer trust in an ecommerce platform is emphasized here, that is optimized during use and ensures stable performance even when the number of customers increases. This is a big advantage that helps ecommerce businesses.

Final Thoughts

AWS well architected framework is a guaranteed architectural journey, helping businesses become more confident when operating in a complex and rapidly moving market like ecommerce. There are many cool things behind this framework, and AHT Tech will help you dig deeper into it before officially applying it to your business.

As a trusted cloud service provider with more than thousand projects on cloud-computing and experience in resolving many strong problems, we are ready to advise, support and install this framework into your digital business.

Contact us immediately for consulting or more detailed information!