The Lenses of the AWS Well Architected Framework

There are many benefits of running the Well Architected Framework tool against your workloads.  Understanding where costs can be saved, areas for security improvement, increased performance, boosting operational efficiency, and/or enhancing reliability; the Framework provides the foundational guidance to properly design your cloud applications.

Originally, the tool worked for workloads in a general sense. As workloads expanded into different domains, AWS created the concept of lenses to focus on specific technology landscapes.

• Financial Services
• Analytics
• Machine Learning
• Internet of Things
• Serverless
• High Performance Computing Lens

Let’s break each of these down (at a high level). All of these lenses still emphasize the need to design a reliable, secure, efficient, and cost-effective systems within the cloud. The Financial Services lens adds the alignment of risk and control objectives along with the regulatory compliance required by authorities.

The Analytics lens focuses on a layered approach for data processing. These layers are Data Ingestion, Data Access and Security, Catalog and Search, Central Storage, Processing and Analytics, and User Access and Interface. This lens validates the access controls for pipelines, ETL flows, and any integrations needed for the workload.

The Machine Learning lens guides you through the phases of the Machine learning stack shown below.  As you work your way through each of the phases, the framework leads you to focus on the business problem, determine the requirements, and validates a data-driven approach.

The Internet of Things (IoT) lens encompasses the process needed by IOT applications to gather, process, analyze, and act on data generated by connected devices. The framework walks through seven different layers (Design and Manufacturing Layer, Edge Layer, Provisioning Layer, Communication Layer, Ingestion Layer, Analytics Layer, and Application Layer).  The decisions made in the first layer influence what can be done in subsequent layers.

The Serverless lens starts with customer expectations to define the optimal experience, then recognize the failure pathways that can occur throughout the application. This lens aims on breaking down each application function into a simple, singular task since separating those tasks decouples the interdependencies and reduces failed service fallouts.

The High Performance Computing lens facilitates a Dynamic Architecture and provides a clear understanding of data origin, size, and frequency of updates. As HPC jobs require a large amount compute resources, there’s a balancing act of time vs cost (on-demand, spot, reserved instances).  Understanding the needs of the application will help determine the proper compute design.

Conducting a Well Architected review prior to deploying any application in AWS can help ensure you have a solid foundation in your design.  If your organization needs any help conducting an AWS Well Architected Framework review, please click here to learn more about how Anexinet can help or simply reach out to us at any time. We’d love to help you out. As an added bonus, you’ll receive AWS credits for remediation work found during the review.