Unlock the power of AWS with a Daemon Well-Architected review

Amazon AWS provides a perfect foothold for businesses looking to optimise their cloud capabilities. The AWS platform takes the guesswork out of cloud engineering, giving users access to intuitive tools, nifty shortcuts and a peerless security infrastructure. 

With so much on offer, it would be easy to miss out on a game changing feature or benefit. That's why Amazon has created the Well-Architected framework- a series of architectural best practices designed to ensure the optimal running of workloads in AWS. 

As proud AWS Advanced Partners and members of the Well-Architected Partner Programme, we’re trusted by AWS to use the Well-Architected framework with our clients. We do this through our Well-Architected review- a deep dive into your cloud architecture followed by a series of detailed recommendations. 

As we told over 300 attendees at a recent AWS webinar, a Well-Architected review is the best way to make sure you’re not selling your cloud capabilities short. In case you missed it, here’s another look at how it works and why it could make a big difference to your business.  

All bases covered

The Well-Architected framework is divided into six pillars. This allows users to examine their cloud set-up from every angle, ensuring no aspect of operational efficiency is overlooked. The six pillars are:

• Operational excellence- Are systems running as efficiently as possible and are they set up to respond to changes?
• Security- Is data protected and are there procedures in place to deal with breaches?
• Reliability- Are workloads performing their intended functions and can they recover quickly from failure?
• Performance efficiency- Are resources optimised for current and future workloads?
• Cost optimisation- Are you avoiding unnecessary costs and can you evolve without overspending?
• Sustainability- Are you minimising the environmental impact of running workloads in the cloud?

Nobody is better acquainted with these pillars than Nathan Webster. As a Daemon Principal Consultant, he has extensive experience implementing Well-Architected principles across a range of businesses. As he explains, this framework allows users to cover all bases while being flexible enough to move with the times:

“The different pillars cover all the main areas your team should focus on. They show you what you’re doing well and where improvements could be made, including any really big holes that you need to address quickly. This is always done with a view to keeping on top of the latest changes, the latest ways of working and keeping standards moving forwards.”

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How Daemon can help 

The Well-Architected framework is a lot to digest, so a bit of outside help can go a long way. Our Well-Architected review combines human expertise with automated workload scanning to provide the most in-depth and cost-effective recommendations. 

We may be working to a standard framework, but our review is completely bespoke. It comes in four parts, each designed to personalise the process as much as possible:

1. We perform a pre-discovery phase during which we use automated tools to scan and map your workloads. 
2. Using this information, we hold a review session during which we discuss each of the Well-Architected pillars in turn. 
3. We issue a remediation plan, listing the high, medium and low risk issues we’ve discovered. We’ll set out the required actions and, if necessary, help you perform them.
4. Once these issues have been resolved, we’ll hold a post-remediation review. We’ll reassess your workloads to make sure nothing has been missed and deliver a final summary report. 

Read more: could you be getting more from your cloud solution?

Data-driven, human-focused

This approach has many advantages, but perhaps the biggest is speed. Many businesses are reluctant to carry out a review because they’re worried it will be too time-consuming. Some have had bad experiences in the past, spending a whole day in a workshop and getting very little done.

We wanted to do things differently, so we designed a data-driven approach that saves time without sacrificing depth. As Nathan explains, this makes a huge difference to the client experience:

“We’ve created automation that allows us to scan a customer’s workload and gather all the relevant information. We also automate the initial review so that, by the time we meet the client, we’re only focused on the areas we need to focus on. This means we can do quite deep reviews in a matter of hours.” 

As well as being faster, an automated pre-discovery phase is also more thorough. Our scanning tools can pick up issues that are invisible to the naked eye, allowing us to create a remediation plan that addresses every problem. As Nathan tells us, this can make it a lot easier to get client’s on board with the process:

“Things are easily missed in review sessions, but our data driven approach makes sure that everything is surfaced. This takes away a lot of the human resistance. We can just say ‘here are the problems- let’s get a plan in place’ without letting emotion get in the way.”

Case study: how we helped Superdry take a fresh approach to the cloud

Don’t leave it too long

There are many reasons to carry out a review. Cloud systems can underperform in a variety of ways, all of which are addressed by the Well-Architected pillars. If you’re experiencing any of these problems, it might be time to give us a call:

• The cost of your cloud spend is continuously increasing and you’re not sure why
• Your development team is struggling to get new releases into production on schedule
• You’ve experienced a security breach, or a security audit has discovered weaknesses in your cloud environment

Even if your AWS systems are performing well, a Well-Architected review can be a big help. No matter how vigilant you are, inefficiencies can creep in over time, and these may be difficult to spot from the inside. As Nathan explains, a review is the perfect way to nip these issues in the bud before they get out of hand:

“You can start out with the best intentions but there are always competing pressures.  A Well-Architected review isn't an audit, but it is a sense check. It lets you say ‘where are we today, has any waste crept into our environment and what can we do about it?’” 

Whether your AWS architecture needs a quick tune-up or a complete overhaul, a Well-Architected review is the best place to start. Get in touch today to book a meeting.