What Is AWS WAFR?
An AWS Well-Architected Framework Review is a comprehensive assessment of your cloud workload against AWS’s best practices​.
HiveTek’s certified AWS experts analyze your architecture across six pillars (Operational Excellence, Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency, Cost Optimization, Sustainability)​, uncovering critical issues and improvement areas. The result is a clear roadmap to enhance your cloud’s security, efficiency, and resilience.
Why It’s Valuable
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Identify Hidden Risks: Uncover architectural weaknesses or security gaps before they impact your business.
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Cut AWS Costs: Spot unused resources and inefficiencies to eliminate wasteful spending.
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Strengthen Security: Get expert recommendations to close vulnerabilities and protect critical data.
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Boost Reliability: Increase uptime and fault tolerance by addressing single points of failure.
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Improve Performance: Optimize workloads for speed and scalability, ensuring a smooth user experience.
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Align with Best Practices: Ensure your cloud follows AWS well-architected best practices, providing a solid foundation for growth.
How It Works
1. Assess
Our AWS-certified architects conduct a detailed review using the AWS Well-Architected Tool. We’ll evaluate your environment via guided questions and analyze it across all six pillars to identify any High Risk Issues or gaps.
2. Recommend
Next, we deliver a comprehensive report of findings. This includes a list of identified issues (prioritized by risk and impact) and clear, actionable recommendations for remediation and optimization.
3. Improve
Finally, we work with your team to implement the recommended improvements. HiveTek can assist in fixing critical issues, optimizing configurations, and validating that your AWS architecture becomes well-architected and aligned with best practices.
Pillars of a Well-Architected Cloud​​
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1. Operational Excellence: Running and monitoring systems to deliver business value, while continually improving processes and procedures
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2. Security: Protecting information, systems, and assets through risk assessments and mitigation of vulnerabilities.
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3. Reliability: Ensuring your workload performs its intended function correctly and consistently, and can recover quickly from failures.
​4. Performance Efficiency: Using IT resources efficiently to meet system demands, and scaling as needs change or technologies evolve.
​5. Cost Optimization: Avoiding unnecessary costs by right-sizing resources and maximizing operational efficiency to achieve the lowest price point.​
6. Sustainability: Minimizing environmental impact through efficient resource usage and designing systems for long-term energy efficiency.
FAQs
Q: What is an AWS Well-Architected Framework Review?
A: It’s a structured assessment of your AWS cloud architecture guided by AWS’s Well-Architected Framework. In a WAFR, certified experts review your workload against a set of best practice questions across six key areas. The goal is to identify high-risk issues and provide recommendations to make your cloud environment more secure, reliable, and efficient.
Q: Who should consider a Well-Architected Review and when?
A: Any organization running significant workloads on AWS should consider a WAFR – whether you’re a startup refining a new application or an enterprise optimizing a mature system. It’s wise to do a review annually or when launching critical new workloads. Reviews are especially valuable before major deployments or migrations, to ensure you start off following best practices.
Q: How long does the WAFR process take and will it disrupt our operations?
A: A typical Well-Architected Review workshop can be completed in a few hours (for a single workload) to a couple of days for more complex environments. We schedule sessions with your team to discuss architecture and answer AWS’s questionnaire. It’s a collaborative, interview-style process – no actual changes are made during the review, so there’s no downtime or risk to your running systems. After the assessment, you’ll quickly receive our findings and can plan improvements on your own timeline.
Ready to Get Started?
Strengthen your cloud today. Contact HiveTek to schedule your AWS Well-Architected Review and start reaping the benefits of a well-architected AWS environment (also available via AWS Marketplace).