Demo: The Well-Architected Tool - Amazon Web Services (AWS) Tutorial

- [Instructor] We've already logged in to the AWS Management Console, and let's go and find the Well-Architected tool. The easiest way to find it is typing in well, and it shows up in the search. After the tool loads, note that we're working in Northern Virginia. If I go over to Northern Virginia, this will show me the different regions where the Well-Architected framework is supported as a tool. And we can see that there's a lot of regions. So, hopefully, you'll find one which matches your level of compliance. We'll stay in the US East, Northern Virginia, the default region for AWS. Once we're using the tool, we have a couple of options. We can scroll down and get some details on how it actually works. Looking at the different pillars, and what the different options are as we go along. To start the process of using the Well-Architected tool, we have to define a workload. So, we're documenting what we're going to actually build or hope to build in the AWS Cloud. And we'll give it a name, a description, and we can also add additional details in if we like for the ownership of the actual project. Then, we select the different environments that we might be running in, the region that we're running in, because the region that you operate in, that you place your workload into, each region has different services that are available. The costs are different. Maybe the compliance rules and regulations will be different. If you also link to another region which isn't AWS, say, on-prem, we can add in the non-AWS region information as well. And, optionally, you might be working with multiple AWS accounts, so you can add in the different IDs. These different IDs are handy to have documented, especially if you're creating things like roles to set up temporary security access from one AWS account to another. At the bottom, we could also put a link into the architectural design, if we actually were graphically creating a design, we can look at the industry type information. Again, this is dependent on how much information you want, depending on how you're sharing this information with different members of your team. So, ultimately, you start off the process by filling in this information, and at the end, when you click Next, then the questions will appear for each of the pillars, and we can start answering the different questions, and then letting Amazon provide their feedback back to us. So, we can see if the decision that we have made makes sense. So, let's go back up to the top, and define our workload, and specify some of the properties. First of all, we have to give a name for the workload. Then, we have to give a brief description. We'll call it SaaS. The owner, let's put the owner in, Mark. And then, we have to figure out the environment where your workload is going to run, production or pre-production. Let's select production. Then, let's select an AWS region that we're going to operate in. Let's pick Northern Virginia. We could add additional accounts if we wanted to collaborate with other AWS accounts. We'll leave that alone for now. For the architectural design, if we had a design, we could link to it. We could choose an industry type. Let's say, Design and Engineering. And we could also define a category. Once we've set those parameters, let's click Next. A few options here. We'll pick the Well-Architected framework and define the workload. There's a few options here. We can start reviewing, which means that we have to go through all of the questions of the Well-Architected framework, operational excellence, security, reliability. All of the different pillars have questions. You might be working to a point, to a milestone. Maybe your design is for a test environment, and then you will come back and say, "All right, "now we want to look at the production environment." So, you could set milestones as well. You can also set up shares. You might want other accounts, AWS accounts, that might be integrated in your design, or other Identity and Access users in particular AWS accounts to take a look at the documentation. All right, back over to Overview. Let's start the review. Now, we get a number of questions for each pillar, and we can see that there's a few options, and every option is going to change what shows up on the right if I click the info link. So, I can go through and decide if I want to have this question being part of the review, and I go through and check the different options, and go through all of the different questions. So, you can see there's quite a lot of things to consider, and it's going to be very beneficial as a member of a team, working together, looking at all the possibilities for your design that you just might not have thought of. Clicking Next, we go through the same process. Once we get through all the different questions for operational excellence, we'll then go into the next pillar questions. And so, we go through and continue on through in this process until we get to the end of the different questions. So, I'm going to save this because I can always get out of what I'm doing and then come back in. Now, note, I've only answered one question, but Amazon is defining this as a potential high risk. So, this is the Well-Architected tool to help you foster communication and create a great workload design at AWS.