The well-architected framework helps you understand the pros and cons of the decisions you make while building systems on AWS or Azure. As with most of this course, we will be using AWS as the service provider.

By using the framework you will learn architectural best practices for designing and operating reliable, secure, efficient, and cost-effective systems in the cloud. It provides a way for you to consistently measure your architectures against best practices and identify areas for improvement. We believe that having well-architected systems greatly increases the likelihood of business success.

As Solutions Architects my team and I have years of experience architecting solutions across a wide variety of business verticals and use cases. We have helped design and architect 70+ customers’ architectures on AWS, Azure, and a few on Oracle. From this experience, we have identified the best practices and core strategies for architecting systems in the cloud.

The AWS Well-Architected Framework documents a set of foundational questions that allow you to understand if a specific architecture aligns well with cloud best practices.

The framework provides a consistent approach to evaluating systems against the qualities you expect from modern cloud-based systems and the remediation that would be required to achieve those qualities.

As AWS continues to evolve, and we continue to learn more from working with our customers, we will continue to refine the definition of well-architected. This section of the course is intended for those in technology roles, such as chief technology officers (CTOs), architects, developers, TPMs, SDMs, and operations team members.