As cloud solutions grow in scale and complexity, following best practices becomes essential to maintain performance, reliability, and security. That’s where the AWS Well-Architected Framework comes in. It provides a structured way to review and improve your workloads running on AWS. In this post, I’ll share an overview of the framework, its key pillars, and how you can apply these principles in our projects, and compare to Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework as well, I have already studyed for Microsoft exams.
What is the AWS Well-Architected Framework?
The AWS Well-Architected Framework is a collection of guidelines and best practices designed to help cloud architects build secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient infrastructure on AWS.
It’s not a product or service, it’s a methodology. AWS offers a Well-Architected Tool inside the AWS Management Console, which helps teams assess their workloads against these best practices.
The Six Pillars of the Framework
Originally launched with five pillars, AWS added a sixth pillar in 2021. Here’s a quick breakdown of each:
1. Operational Excellence
Focus: Running and monitoring systems effectively, and continually improving processes and procedures.
Key Practices:
- Automating changes
- Performing operations as code
- Setting up monitoring and alerting (using services like CloudWatch and CloudTrail)
- Conducting regular game days and failure simulations
2. Security
Focus: Protecting information, systems, and assets while delivering business value.
Key Practices:
- Implementing strong identity foundations (using IAM, MFA)
- Enabling traceability (CloudTrail, Config)
- Applying security at all layers (VPC, Security Groups, NACLs)
- Automating security best practices
- Protecting data in transit and at rest
3. Reliability
Focus: Ensuring workloads can recover from failures and meet customer demands.
Key Practices:
- Designing for failure
- Setting up distributed systems
- Monitoring and managing quotas and limits
- Enabling automatic recovery (using Auto Scaling, Elastic Load Balancer, Route 53 Health Checks)
4. Performance Efficiency
Focus: Using IT and cloud resources efficiently to meet system requirements as demand changes.
Key Practices:
- Using serverless architectures when possible (Lambda, DynamoDB)
- Leveraging Auto Scaling
- Using different storage solutions for different workloads (S3, EBS, EFS, FSx)
- Regular performance testing and tuning
5. Cost Optimization
Focus: Avoiding unnecessary costs while maintaining performance and functionality.
Key Practices:
- Right-sizing resources
- Using pricing models like Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, and Spot Instances
- Enabling cost monitoring and reporting (using Cost Explorer and AWS Budgets)
- Turning off unused resources
6. Sustainability (Introduced in 2021)
Focus: Minimizing environmental impact by optimizing resource usage and making energy-efficient architecture decisions.
Key Practices:
- Choosing more efficient instance types
- Using managed services
- Optimizing workloads to run for shorter durations
- Decommissioning unused resources
How to Perform a Well-Architected Review
You can conduct a Well-Architected Review (WAR) using the AWS Well-Architected Tool available in the AWS Management Console.
Steps typically include:
- Define your workload: Identify the scope of the review.
- Answer a set of questions: For each pillar, AWS provides a series of best-practice questions.
- Identify risks: The tool highlights areas that are non-compliant with AWS best practices.
- Implement improvements: Address high and medium risk items to improve your architecture.
AWS Partners sometimes offer free Well-Architected Reviews with funding support for remediation, so if your company works with a partner, check for that option.
Comparison to Microsoft’s approach
While both AWS and Microsoft Azure provide a Well-Architected Framework to guide cloud architects and engineers in building secure, reliable, and efficient solutions, there are subtle differences between them.
AWS Well-Architected Framework is built around six pillars: Operational Excellence, Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency, Cost Optimization, and Sustainability (added in 2021). Azure Well-Architected Framework, on the other hand, focuses on five pillars, covering similar areas: Cost Optimization, Operational Excellence, Performance Efficiency, Reliability, and Security, but it does not yet include a dedicated Sustainability pillar like AWS.
Despite these naming and structural differences, both frameworks share the same goal: helping organizations design cloud workloads that are resilient, cost-effective, performant, secure, and operationally sound. The tools offered by each provider (AWS Well-Architected Tool vs Azure Well-Architected Review Assessments) also follow similar workflows: assess → identify risks → recommend improvements → remediate.
Final Thoughts
The AWS Well-Architected Framework is more than just a checklist… it’s a mindset. Applying its principles can help you build systems that are not only functional but also scalable, secure, and cost-effective.
If you’re preparing for the AWS SysOps Administrator (SOA-C02) or Solutions Architect exams, understanding these pillars is essential. They often appear both in theoretical questions and in practical lab scenarios.
For more information, visit the official AWS documentation:
https://aws.amazon.com/architecture/well-architected/
