Introducing Cloud Architecting

AWS Academy Cloud

Architecting

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Introduction
Introducing Cloud Architecting

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Module objectives This module prepares you to do the following:
• Define cloud architecture.
• Describe how to design and evaluate architectures
using the AWS Well-Architected Framework.
• Explain best practices for building solutions on
Amazon Web Services (AWS).
• Describe how to make informed decisions about
where to place AWS resources.

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Module overview
Presentation sections Knowledge checks
• Cloud Architecting • 10-question knowledge check
• AWS Well-Architected Framework
• Best practices for building solutions on
AWS
• AWS Global Infrastructure

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As a cloud architect • I need to understand the practice of applying
designing AWS cloud best practices to a solution that uses
architectures: cloud services and features to meet an
organization’s technical needs and business use
cases.
• I need to evaluate an architecture with the AWS
Well-Architected Framework.
• I need to apply best practices to building
solutions on AWS.

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Cloud Architecting
Introducing Cloud Architecting

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Cloud computing and AWS
2000 Early 2000s 2006

Amazon developed well-documented

APIs.
Amazon was challenged with building
an ecommerce service to for third-party Amazon SQS
sellers to build their own shopping sites. Projects still took
months to complete.

Amazon S3 Amazon EC2

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Cloud architecture

Requirements Structure design Completed structure

Customer Building crew

Architect
(Decision maker) (Delivery team)
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Role of a cloud architect

Plan Research Build

• Set technical cloud strategy • Investigate cloud services • Design the transformation
with business leads. specifications and workload roadmap with milestones, work
requirements. streams, and owners.
• Analyze solutions for business
needs and requirements. • Review existing workload • Manage the adoption and
architectures. migration.
• Design prototype solutions.

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Key takeaways: What • Cloud architecture is the practice of applying
is cloud architecting? cloud characteristics to a solution that uses
cloud services and features to meet an
organization’s technical needs and business use
cases.
• You can use AWS services to create highly
available, scalable, and reliable architectures.
• Cloud architects are responsible for managing
an organization’s cloud computing architecture.

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AWS Well-Architected Framework
Introducing Cloud Architecture

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Pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework

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 Operational Excellence pillar

Run and monitor systems Continually improve View the entire

that deliver business value. supporting processes and workload as code.
procedures.

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Security pillar

Implement a strong identity Maintain traceability.

foundation.

Apply security Implement risk assessment

at all layers. and mitigation strategies.

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Reliability pillar

Recover quickly. Dynamically meet Mitigate disruptions.

compute demand.

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Performance Efficiency pillar

Choose and maintain Democratize advanced Employ mechanical

efficient resources. technologies. Sympathy.

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Cost Optimization pillar

Measure efficiency. Eliminate unneeded

expense.

Adopt the right Consider using

consumption model. managed services.

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Sustainability pillar

Establish sustainability goals. Maximize utilization.

Choose efficient hardware Reduce downstream impact.

and software.

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Using the AWS WA Tool

• Helps you review the state of your workloads and

compares them to the latest AWS architectural best
practices
• Gives you access to knowledge and best practices used by
AWS architects when you need it
• Delivers an action plan with step-by-step guidance on
AWS Well- how to build better workloads for the cloud
Architected Tool
• Provides a consistent process for you to review and
measure your cloud architectures

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Key takeaways: AWS • The AWS Well-Architected Framework provides a
Well-Architected consistent approach to evaluate cloud architectures and
guidance to help implement designs.
Framework
• The AWS Well-Architected Framework is organized
into six pillars.
• Each pillar documents a set of foundational questions
you can use to understand if a specific architecture
aligns well with cloud best practices.
• The AWS WA Tool helps you review the state of your
workloads and compares them to the latest AWS
architectural best practices.

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Best practices for building solutions on AWS
Introducing Cloud Architecting

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Design trade-offs
As you design a solution, think carefully about trade-offs so you can select an
optimal approach.
• Evaluate trade-offs so you can select an optimal approach.
• Examples of trade-offs include the following:
• Trade consistency, durability, and space for time and latency to deliver higher
performance.
• For new features, prioritize speed to market over cost.
• Base design decisions on empirical data.

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Implementing scalability
Ensure that your architecture can handle changes in demand.

Users rarely
experience a
service
Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is
interruption.
alerted and scales out.

New server is ready before

capacity is reached.

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Automating your environment
Automate the provisioning, termination, and configuration of resources.
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Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling CloudWatch automatically logs the

1 automatically launches and action to a change management
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configures an identical solution.
server.

Application server
crashes.

Amazon CloudWatch An alarm notifies the

automatically detects the administrator. 4
unhealthy instance.

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Using IaC
Provision your computing infrastructure using code instead of manual processes.
• Rapidly deploy duplicate environments.
• Reduce configuration errors from manual
configuration.
• Propagate changes consistently to all stacks. Infrastructure as code
(IaC) template

Resources Resources Resources

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Treating resources as disposable
Take advantage of the dynamically provisioned nature of cloud computing.
• Automate deployment of new resources with identical configurations.
• Stop resources that are not in use.
• Test updates on new resources, and then replace old resources with updated
ones.

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Using loosely coupled components
Design architectures with independent components.

Best practice Anti-pattern

Web Web
servers servers

Elastic Load Balancing

(ELB)

Application Application
servers servers

Web servers decoupled with Elastic Web servers tightly coupled to

Load Balancing (ELB). application servers.

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Designing services, not servers
Use the breadth of AWS services. Don't limit your infrastructure to servers.
• When appropriate, consider using containers or a serverless solution.
• Message queues can handle communication between applications.
• Static web assets can be stored off server, such as on Amazon Simple Storage
Service (Amazon S3).
• User authentication and user state storage can be handled by managed AWS
services.

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Choosing the right database solution
Match technology to the workload, not the other way around.
• Read and write needs
• Total storage requirements
• Typical object size and nature of access to these objects
• Durability requirements
• Latency requirements
• Maximum concurrent users to support
• Nature of queries
• Required strength of integrity controls

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Avoiding single points of failure
Assume everything fails. Then, design backward.

Replication
Under normal Create a secondary (standby)
operations database server and replicate the
Database Database server
data.
server (secondary)
Application (primary)
servers

If the main database server goes

Upon failure offline, the secondary server
Replication
picks up the load.
Failed Database server
Application database (secondary)
servers server
(primary)
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Optimizing for cost
Take advantage of the flexibility of AWS to increase your cost efficiency.
• Are my resources the right size and type for the job?
• Which metrics should I monitor?
• How do I turn off resources that are not in use?
• How often will I need to use this resource?
• Can I replace any of my servers with managed services?

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Using caching
Minimize redundant data retrieval operations, improving performance and cost.

AWS Cloud
Amazon CloudFront Region

First request

Internet Edge node S3 bucket

User origin
with dog.jpg

AWS Cloud
Amazon CloudFront Region
Second and
subsequent requests
Edge node with dog.jpg S3 bucket
Internet
User origin
with dog.jpg

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Securing your entire infrastructure
Build security into every layer of your infrastructure.
• Use managed services.
• Log access of resources.
• Isolate parts of your infrastructure.
• Encrypt data in transit and at rest.
• Enforce access control granularly, using the principle of least privilege.
• Use multi-factor authentication (MFA).
• Automate your deployments to keep security consistent.

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Key takeaways: Best • As you design solutions, evaluate trade-offs and base
practices for building your decisions on empirical data.
solutions on AWS • Follow these best practices when building solutions on
AWS:
• Implement scalability.
• Automate your environment.
• Treat resources as disposable.
• Use loosely-coupled components.
• Design services, not servers.
• Choose the right database solution.
• Avoid single points of failure.
• Optimize for cost.
• Use caching.
• Secure your entire infrastructure.
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AWS Global Infrastructure
Introducing Cloud Architecting

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AWS infrastructure topics

AWS Regions

Availability Zones

AWS Local Zones

AWS data centers

AWS points of presence (PoPs)

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Selecting Regions
• A Region is a geographical area.
Region
• Each Region usually consists of two or more
Availability Zones. Availability Zone

• Communication between Regions uses AWS

backbone network infrastructure.
• You enable and control data replication across Availability Zone

Regions.

Availability Zone

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Selecting Availability Zones
• Each Availability Zone includes the following: AWS Cloud

• It is made up of one or more data centers. Region

• It is designed for fault isolation. Availability Zone eu-west-1a

Data center
• It is interconnected with other Availability Zones in a
Region using high-speed private links. Data center

• For certain services, you can choose your Data center

Availability Zones.
Availability Zone eu-west-1b
• AWS recommends replicating across Availability
Zones for resiliency. Availability Zone eu-west-1c

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Using Local Zones
• Local Zones make it possible for you to run latency-sensitive portions of
applications closer to end users and resources in a specific geography.
• They are an extension of a Region.
• With Local Zones, you can place AWS compute, storage, database, and
other select services closer to large population, industry, and IT centers
where no Regions exist today.
• Local Zones are managed and supported by AWS.

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Role of AWS data centers
• Data centers are where the data resides and
data processing occurs.
• A data center typically has tens of thousands of
servers. Data center

• All data centers are online and serving

customers.
• AWS custom network equipment includes the
following:
• Is sourced from multiple ODMs
• Has a customized network protocol stack

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AWS PoPs

Edge location Regional edge cache

AWS data centers and servers located close AWS data centers between the origin server
to customers and designed to deliver and the edge location that have a longer
services with the lowest latency possible cache

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Key takeaways: AWS • The AWS Global Infrastructure consists of
Global Infrastructure Regions, Availability Zones, and edge
locations.
• Your choice of a Region is typically based on
compliance requirements or to reduce latency.
• Each Availability Zone is physically separate
from other Availability Zones and has
redundant power, networking, and connectivity.
• Edge locations and regional edge caches
improve performance by caching content closer
to users.

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Module wrap-up
Introducing Cloud Architecting

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Module summary
This module prepared you to do the following:
• Define cloud architecture.
• Describe how to design and evaluate architectures using the AWS Well-Architected
Framework.
• Explain best practices for building solutions on AWS.
• Describe how to make informed decisions about where to place AWS resources.

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Module knowledge • The knowledge check is delivered online in
check your course.
• The knowledge check includes 10 questions
based on material presented on the slides and in
the slide notes.
• You can retake the knowledge check as many
times as you like.

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Thank you

Corrections, feedback, or other questions?

Contact us at https://support.aws.amazon.com/#/contacts/aws-academy.

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