How do you select appropriate cloud resources and architecture for your workload?
7 best practices
Use "Learn about and understand available cloud services and features" to make architecture and operational choices based on evidence rather than assumptions. Define clear criteri…
Use "Use guidance from your cloud provider or an appropriate partner to learn about architecture patterns and best practices" to make architecture and operational choices based on…
Use "Factor cost into architectural decisions" to make architecture and operational choices based on evidence rather than assumptions. Define clear criteria, collect current-state…
Use "Evaluate how trade-offs impact customers and architecture efficiency" to make architecture and operational choices based on evidence rather than assumptions. Define clear cri…
"Use policies and reference architectures" should be delivered as a standard operating capability with explicit scope, controls, and validation checkpoints. Embed it into day-to-d…
"Use benchmarking to drive architectural decisions" should be delivered as a standard operating capability with explicit scope, controls, and validation checkpoints. Embed it into…
"Use a data-driven approach for architectural choices" should be delivered as a standard operating capability with explicit scope, controls, and validation checkpoints. Embed it i…
Key Concepts
Performance Architecture Fundamentals
Workload profiling: Use this concept to guide architecture and operating decisions for this question area. Define measurable targets, assign clear ownership, and review results regularly against expected business outcomes.
Architecture patterns: Use this concept to guide architecture and operating decisions for this question area. Define measurable targets, assign clear ownership, and review results regularly against expected business outcomes.
Performance objectives: Use this concept to guide architecture and operating decisions for this question area. Define measurable targets, assign clear ownership, and review results regularly against expected business outcomes.
Optimization and Operations
Benchmarking strategy: Use this concept to guide architecture and operating decisions for this question area. Define measurable targets, assign clear ownership, and review results regularly against expected business outcomes.
Cost-performance tradeoffs: Use this concept to guide architecture and operating decisions for this question area. Define measurable targets, assign clear ownership, and review results regularly against expected business outcomes.
Scalability planning: Use this concept to guide architecture and operating decisions for this question area. Define measurable targets, assign clear ownership, and review results regularly against expected business outcomes.
Implementation Approach
1. Characterize workload demand
- Define latency, throughput, and concurrency targets
- Profile steady-state and peak traffic patterns
- Identify critical request paths and bottlenecks
- Document compliance and data locality constraints
2. Evaluate architecture options
- Compare monolith, microservice, and event-driven approaches
- Prefer managed services for undifferentiated heavy lifting
- Assess network path and data flow performance implications
- Model availability and scaling behaviors for each option
3. Validate with testing
- Run load tests with representative production patterns
- Capture baseline metrics for candidate architectures
- Measure tail latency and saturation indicators
- Select architecture that best meets SLOs and constraints
4. Iterate continuously
- Review architecture fitness as demand changes
- Adopt new AWS capabilities when they improve outcomes
- Track performance regressions after releases
- Retune architecture with evidence from telemetry
AWS Services to Consider
AWS Compute Optimizer
Analyzes usage telemetry and recommends resource sizing adjustments to improve performance and efficiency.
Amazon CloudWatch
Collects metrics, logs, alarms, and dashboards so teams can detect issues early and track operational outcomes.
AWS X-Ray
Traces distributed requests to identify latency bottlenecks and dependency failures across microservices.
AWS Well-Architected Tool
Captures workload reviews, risks, and improvement plans so teams can continuously track architecture quality.
AWS Fault Injection Service
Runs controlled chaos experiments to validate resilience and recovery mechanisms.
Common Challenges and Solutions
Challenge: Selecting architecture based on preference
Solution: Use measurable workload requirements and benchmark data as decision inputs.
Challenge: Ignoring peak and failure scenarios
Solution: Test performance under spikes and degraded dependency conditions before finalizing design.
Challenge: No periodic re-evaluation
Solution: Establish quarterly reviews to reassess architecture against changing usage patterns.