Well-Architected Cloud: Azure, AWS, and Google clouds.

What is a well-architected cloud?

Cloud service providers leverage a best practice architectural framework that is based on five pillars, these are:

Security
Reliability
Cost Optimization
Performance Efficiency, and
Operational Excellence.

Comparing cloud service providers’ well-architected pillars

The five pillars are similar across the top three cloud service providers Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Azure	AWS	Google Cloud Platform
Security	Security	Security, privacy, and compliance
Reliability	Reliability	Reliability
Cost Optimization	Cost Optimization	Cost Optimization
Operational Excellence	Operational Excellence	Operational Excellence
Performance Efficiency	Performance Efficiency	Performance Optimization

Where can you find the cloud provider framework resources?

Cloud provider best-practices framework resources can be found at the following links:

Azure: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/framework/

AWS: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/framework/the-pillars-of-the-framework.html

Google Cloud: https://cloud.google.com/architecture/framework

What are the key topics addressed by cloud service providers?

The key topics that cloud providers address with regard to well-architected cloud solutions have been summarized below with the reference source links included.

What security topics are addressed in well-architected cloud architecture?

Protecting data, systems, applications, assets, and users from threats. Key topics addressed include:

Shared responsibilities in cloud management
Provider-specific security principles
Identity and access management
Threat detection and protection
Information protection and governance
Insider risk management
Discovering and responding to threats
Management of assets
Implementing compute and container security
Implementing data security
Application security
Data residency and sovereignty requirements
Privacy requirements
Infrastructure protection
Incident response
Regulatory compliance
Network security and containment
Security operations

Where can you find well-architected Azure, AWS, and GCP security pillar resources?

Azure: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/framework/security/overview

AWS: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/security-pillar/welcome.html?ref=wellarchitected-wp

GCP: https://cloud.google.com/architecture/framework/security

What reliability topics are addressed in well-architected cloud architecture?

Reliability:

Ensuring that workloads perform and support the business as intended. Topics addressed include:

Reliability principles
Resiliency checklists
Availability Zones
Designing, testing, and monitoring for reliability
Understanding business availability needs
Managing service quotas and constraints
Planning network topologies
Designing your workload service architectures
Interactions in distributed systems to prevent, mitigate and withstand failures
Change Management
Using fault isolation to protect workloads
Component failures
Disaster recovery (DR)
Single and multiple-region scenarios
Building observability into your infrastructure and applications

Where can you find well-architected Azure, AWS, and GCP reliability pillar resources?

Azure: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/framework/resiliency/overview

AWS: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/reliability-pillar/welcome.html?ref=wellarchitected-wp

GCP: https://cloud.google.com/architecture/framework/reliability

What cost optimization topics are addressed in well-architected cloud architecture?

Achieve business objectives by accelerating time to market at the lowest possible cost.

Capture stakeholder requirements and map associated costs.
Identify regional demand and local cost implications.
Leverage governance to define a cost review process.
Understand your peak throughput consumption requirements.
Monitor costs and implement alerts for set thresholds.
Balance out tradeoffs for costs.
Optimize costs for compute, storage, databases, networking, and operations.

Where can you find well-architected Azure, AWS, and GCP cost-optimization pillar resources?

Azure: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/framework/cost/overview

AWS: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/cost-optimization-pillar/welcome.html?ref=wellarchitected-wp

GCP: https://cloud.google.com/architecture/framework/cost-optimization

What operational excellence topics are addressed in well-architected cloud architecture?

Improving your standard operating procedures to ensure that business workloads run as effectively as possible to support business objectives.

Design, build and orchestrate workloads.
Monitoring and diagnostics of workloads.
Availability of applications
Deployment processes
Deployment automation
Testing
Organizational priorities
Operating model
Organizational culture
Designing for telemetry
Designing for operations
Operational Readiness and Change Management
Understanding workload and operational health
Responding to events
Establish cloud support and escalation processes

Where can you find well-architected Azure, AWS, and GCP operational excellence pillar resources?

Azure: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/framework/devops/overview

AWS: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/operational-excellence-pillar/welcome.html

GCP: https://cloud.google.com/architecture/framework/operational-excellence

What performance optimization topics are addressed in well-architected cloud architecture?

Adapt to continuously meet business demands as efficiently as possible.

Ensure workloads can scale to meet business demands.
Leverage architecture design for performance.
Plan for growth by understanding your current business workloads.
Monitor the health state of current workloads to maintain overall workload performance.
Implement design patterns to build more performant workloads.
Consider tradeoffs between performance optimization and other aspects of the design, such as reliability, security, cost efficiency, and operability.

Where can you find well-architected Azure, AWS, and GCP performance optimization pillar resources?

Azure: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/framework/scalability/overview

AWS: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/performance-efficiency-pillar/welcome.html?ref=wellarchitected-wp

GCP: https://cloud.google.com/architecture/framework/performance-optimization

I hope these resources will help you and your team leverage these well-architected pillar resources to start:

Improving service performance and availability.
Aligning to best-practice approaches to security.
Shortening software development delivery cycles.
Reducing your development and operating costs.
Implementing enterprise-level control
Improving internal business customer satisfaction