My AWS Rocks!

This is the first in a three part series on the AWS Well-Architected Framework. It is based on my presentation at the AWS Thames Valley user group "How to design well when there is no rule book". This first part looks at what the Well-Architected Framework is. On the AWS website they describe the framework as: The AWS Well-Architected Framework describes the key concepts, design principles, and architectural best practices for designing and running workloads in the cloud. By answering a set of foundational questions, you learn how well your architecture aligns with cloud best practices and are provided guidance for making improvements.

I have been working in technology for over 20 years, and with AWS technologies since about 2010. My main focus has been on traditional infrastructure and networking but have a strong security mindset. Up until recently I had little DevOps experience but something I have concentrated on over the last 2 years. Currently I am working for Accenture as part of the Accenture Amazon Business Group (AABG) as a senior technical architect and lead of the UK&I Well Architeced practice.

When building a house, the most important thing to get right is the foundations. With out a good foundation everything that is built on top will have issues and, worse case, completely fail. Building IT solutions is no different. We have to ensure the basic foundations are in place in order to build good solutions for the business we are working for. Often I see organizations trying to implement the foundations once they have built the first few systems or they realize that "this cloud craze is real". Many times it is after a proof of concept has suddenly become a production system. What ever the reason for the delay it always causes rework, at a cost to the business, and can cause friction or resentment from engineers who implemented the first solutions.

As well as my personal GIT repository, I also have a GIT Organization for code related to this blog and my YouTube videos. At present I have two public repositories available, blog-code and templates. myawsrocksmyawsrocks has 2 repositories available. Follow their code on GitHub.GitHub‌As the name suggests, the blog-code repository contains all the code ‌that I use in examples and walkthroughs, either on this site or YouTube. Each folder in the repository relates to a single blog/video and contains all the code that I refer to. In each folder is a README.md file that gives s brief outline of the project as well as links to this site and/or the YouTube video.

Lets discuss some of the basics you need to begin to rock your AWS solutions. Firstly everything has to be via code! Doing things via the console is not the way to go long term. As soon as you can look at using the Command Line Interface (CLI). Even using the CLI will start to give you a better understanding of how AWS works under the hood and allow you to design and build better solutions. See the links at the bottom on how to install the CLI.