Cloud architecture frameworks
On this page 9 topics
Overview
Topics
- AWS or Azure Well-Architected principles
Learn first
3 h of practice (estimate)
Learning outcomes
- Explain the pillars of a well-architected framework (operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, sustainability).
- Run a well-architected review on a design and prioritize findings.
- Turn findings into a remediation plan with owners.
Lessons
Lab and exercises
Lab
ARC-022-LAB1 · Larkspur review
Outcomes: 1–3 · Time: ~3 h
- Collect the infrastructure design artifacts from ARC-011 to ARC-021.
- Review each pillar with questions and evidence.
- Record findings and rate them by likelihood and impact.
- Prioritize, then decide per finding: fix, mitigate, accept, or defer.
- Write the remediation plan with owners and dates, and the review report.
Acceptance: high-risk findings either fixed in the design or accepted by a named owner.
Exercises (case-based; six exercises)
| ID | Outcome | Task |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-022-EX01 | 1 | Write one review question per pillar for Larkspur. |
| ARC-022-EX02 | 1 | Map these concerns to pillars: restore tests, tag enforcement, MFA for admins, autoscaling, energy-efficient regions, runbooks. |
| ARC-022-EX03 | 2 | Describe how you would run the review so findings rest on evidence. |
| ARC-022-EX04 | 2 | Given six findings, rate and order them: no DR test, missing tags on non-prod, payment egress open, unused large instances, logs kept forever, no alerting on checkout errors. |
| ARC-022-EX05 | 3 | Write a remediation entry for the payment egress finding. |
| ARC-022-EX06 | 3 | A sponsor wants to accept the missing DR test risk. Write the acceptance record. |
Show solutions
- EX01 Operational excellence: how do we deploy and roll back? Security: who can reach payment data? Reliability: what happens if a zone fails? Performance: how does checkout scale at peak? Cost: which costs scale with volume? Sustainability: are idle resources shut down?
- EX02 Restore tests: reliability; tag enforcement: operational excellence or cost; MFA: security; autoscaling: performance efficiency (and cost); efficient regions: sustainability; runbooks: operational excellence.
- EX03 Preparation with owners, question lists, requests for evidence (configs, test results, dashboards), walkthrough with the build and operations teams, recorded findings.
- EX04 High: payment egress open, no DR test, no checkout alerting; medium: unused large instances (cost), logs kept forever (cost and privacy); low: missing tags on non-prod. Order high first.
- EX05 Finding, risk high; action: restrict egress to the provider endpoints; owner: network lead; due date; success: flow test shows other destinations denied.
- EX06 Risk statement, impact, reason for acceptance, compensating controls, accepting owner's name, date, and review date; sponsor signs.
Workplace evidence: a well-architected review you ran and the improvements it produced.
Outcome coverage: all outcomes covered by exercises and the lab.
Quiz
Outcomes: O1 pillars · O2 running and prioritizing a review · O3 remediation.
A self-check for you: nothing is graded, saved or sent anywhere. Choose an answer, then check it. You can try again as often as you like.
Practical part
Review report using the ARC-022-LAB1 findings and remediation plan plus exercises ARC-022-EX01 to EX06. Pass: quiz at least 8/10, at least five of six exercises correct, and every high-risk finding fixed in the design or accepted by a named owner.
Common mistakes
Treating the review as a one-time checkbox; fixing low-risk findings first.
Assessment
Review report.
Workplace evidence
A well-architected review you ran and the improvements it produced.
Career relevance
Architecture assurance (ARC-042).