How to Build a Well-Architected AWS Cloud Environment

Summary: Support your business applications and workloads with a well-architected cloud environment. Using the Management and Governance Lens, the AWS Well-Architected Review can help you build a cloud environment that is agile, reliable, scalable and secure.

(This is a series on the AWS Well-Architected Framework. This is Part 1. Read Part 2 here.)

With the increased pace of cloud adoption, it is important for any business to ensure that the hosted environments are secure, reliable, sustainable, high performing and resilient, besides meeting cost optimization goals.

The AWS Well-Architected Review addresses these areas and provides guidance on creating the best environment which leverages the full potential of cloud hosting. It consists of different Pillars such as operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, and sustainability to enable cloud architects to build infrastructure that meets this criteria for a variety of applications and workloads.

The Well-Architected Review extends the guidance further with the help of AWS Well-Architected Lens to meet the specific workloads of various industries. One such lens is the Management and Governance (M&G) Lens, which provides prescriptive guidance on how to manage your AWS workloads so that you have environments that are migration-ready, scale-ready, and cost-efficient.

Management and Governance Lensas the name suggests consists of two parts: Management and Governance of your cloud environment.

Governance focuses on the “what”: defining and achieving your organization’s strategy, how decisions are made, by whom, and the accountability for the resulting decisions, providing the articulation of your risk appetite, and how strong the controls need to be – the preventative versus detective balance.

Management is focused on the “how“: how to optimize the process, and allocate resources. Management is responsible for the execution of strategy and to get the right balance.

All this boils down to eight key points that need to be managed:

• Controls and guardrails
• Network Connectivity
• Identity Management
• Security Management
• Monitoring and Observability
• Cloud Financial Management
• Service Management
• Sourcing and Distribution

The M&G Lens offers detailed implementation priorities that help define what steps to take and in what order for all the key areas. It gives information on how the functions interoperate to provide efficient management and governance. It provides recommended AWS services for each function,with information on the AWS Partner solutions available in the AWS Marketplace which support multi-account environments and work with AWS Control Tower. The Lens also provides guidance on implementation through architectural diagrams, guides, and product videos.

While the M&G Lens provides all the key information and tools to create a well-architected cloud environment, maximizing its effectiveness requires cloud expertise and knowledge of various AWS services and other tools. This can be challenging for new or even existing AWS customers, especially those who want to migrate or start in the cloud. This is where AWS Partners can help by providing turnkey solutions and services to remediate any shortcomings of the customer’s cloud environment, and achieve agility, compliance and security.

As an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, with competencies in DevOps, Healthcare, Security, Managed Services, Managed Security Services, and being a Well-Architected Program Partner, our team at Ibexlabs is well positioned to guide your organization on the implementation of the Management and Governance Lens, and in choosing the right AWS services and tools to help you achieve a Well-Architected environment.

As a Built on a Control Tower Partner, we offer solutions to help you easily govern your multi-account cloud setup. Our solutions include web and microservices hosting platforms, security and compliance, End-user Computing, and Enterprise Networking to accelerate your journey towards building a Well-Architected environment.

Get in touch with us to learn how we can help.

In Part 2 of the series, our focus will be on Security and how you can enhance the AWS Control Tower environment with security services integration.