-
Operational Excellence
-
- Resources have identified owners
- Processes and procedures have identified owners
- Operations activities have identified owners responsible for their performance
- Team members know what they are responsible for
- Mechanisms exist to identify responsibility and ownership
- Mechanisms exist to request additions, changes, and exceptions
- Responsibilities between teams are predefined or negotiated
-
- Executive Sponsorship
- Team members are empowered to take action when outcomes are at risk
- Escalation is encouraged
- Communications are timely, clear, and actionable
- Experimentation is encouraged
- Team members are encouraged to maintain and grow their skill sets
- Resource teams appropriately
- Diverse opinions are encouraged and sought within and across teams
-
- Use version control
- Test and validate changes
- Use configuration management systems
- Use build and deployment management systems
- Perform patch management
- Implement practices to improve code quality
- Share design standards
- Use multiple environments
- Make frequent, small, reversible changes
- Fully automate integration and deployment
-
Security
-
- Evaluate and implement new security services and features regularly
- Automate testing and validation of security controls in pipelines
- Identify and prioritize risks using a threat model
- Keep up-to-date with security recommendations
- Keep up-to-date with security threats
- Identify and validate control objectives
- Secure account root user and properties
- Separate workloads using accounts
-
- Analyze public and cross-account access
- Manage access based on life cycle
- Share resources securely with a third party
- Reduce permissions continuously
- Share resources securely within your organization
- Establish emergency access process
- Define permission guardrails for your organization
- Grant least privilege access
- Define access requirements
-
- Build a program that embeds security ownership in workload teams
- Centralize services for packages and dependencies
- Manual code reviews
- Automate testing throughout the development and release lifecycle
- Train for application security
- Regularly assess security properties of the pipelines
- Deploy software programmatically
- Perform regular penetration testing
-
-
Reliability
-
- How do you ensure sufficient gap between quotas and maximum usage to accommodate failover?
- How do you automate quota management?
- How do you monitor and manage service quotas?
- How do you accommodate fixed service quotas and constraints through architecture?
- How do you manage service quotas and constraints across accounts and Regions?
- How do you manage service quotas and constraints?
- How do you build a program that embeds reliability into workload teams?
-
- How do you enforce non-overlapping private IP address ranges in all private address spaces?
- How do you prefer hub-and-spoke topologies over many-to-many mesh?
- How do you ensure IP subnet allocation accounts for expansion and availability?
- How do you provision redundant connectivity between private networks in the cloud and on-premises environments?
- How do you use highly available network connectivity for workload public endpoints?
-
- Monitor end-to-end tracing of requests through your system
- Conduct reviews regularly
- Analytics
- Automate responses (Real-time processing and alarming)
- Send notifications (Real-time processing and alarming)
- Define and calculate metrics (Aggregation)
- Monitor End-to-End Tracing of Requests Through Your System
-
- Monitor all components of the workload to detect failures
- Fail over to healthy resources
- Automate healing on all layers
- Rely on the data plane and not the control plane during recovery
- Use static stability to prevent bimodal behavior
- Send notifications when events impact availability
- Architect your product to meet availability targets and uptime service level agreements (SLAs)
-
-
Cost Optimization
-
- Establish ownership of cost optimization
- Establish a partnership between finance and technology
- Establish cloud budgets and forecasts
- Implement cost awareness in your organizational processes
- Monitor cost proactively
- Keep up-to-date with new service releases
- Quantify business value from cost optimization
- Report and notify on cost optimization
- Create a cost-aware culture
-
- Perform cost analysis for different usage over time
- Analyze all components of this workload
- Perform a thorough analysis of each component
- Select components of this workload to optimize cost in line with organization priorities
- Perform cost analysis for different usage over time
- Select software with cost effective licensing
-
-
Performance
-
- Learn about and understand available cloud services and features
- Evaluate how trade-offs impact customers and architecture efficiency
- Use guidance from your cloud provider or an appropriate partner to learn about architecture patterns and best practices
- Factor cost into architectural decisions
- Use policies and reference architectures
- Use benchmarking to drive architectural decisions
- Use a data-driven approach for architectural choices
-
- Use purpose-built data store that best support your data access and storage requirements
- Collect and record data store performance metrics
- Evaluate available configuration options for data store
- Implement Strategies to Improve Query Performance in Data Store
- Implement data access patterns that utilize caching
-
- Understand how networking impacts performance
- Evaluate available networking features
- Choose appropriate dedicated connectivity or VPN for your workload
- Use load balancing to distribute traffic across multiple resources
- Choose network protocols to improve performance
- Choose your workload's location based on network requirements
- Optimize network configuration based on metrics
-
- Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure workload health and performance
- Use monitoring solutions to understand the areas where performance is most critical
- Define a process to improve workload performance
- Review metrics at regular intervals
- Load test your workload
- Use automation to proactively remediate performance-related issues
- Keep your workload and services up-to-date
-
-
Sustainability
-
- Optimize geographic placement of workloads based on their networking requirements
- Align SLAs with sustainability goals
- Optimize geographic placement of workloads based on their networking requirements
- Stop the creation and maintenance of unused assets
- Optimize team member resources for activities performed
- Implement buffering or throttling to flatten the demand curve
-
- Optimize software and architecture for asynchronous and scheduled jobs
- Remove or refactor workload components with low or no use
- Optimize areas of code that consume the most time or resources
- Optimize impact on devices and equipment
- Use software patterns and architectures that best support data access and storage patterns
- Remove unneeded or redundant data
- Use technologies that support data access and storage patterns
- Use policies to manage the lifecycle of your datasets
- Use shared file systems or storage to access common data
- Back up data only when difficult to recreate
- Use elasticity and automation to expand block storage or file system
- Minimize data movement across networks
-
- Articles coming soon
Ensure personnel capability
Ensuring Personnel Capability for Operational Support
Ensuring personnel capability is vital for maintaining the operational stability and reliability of a workload. By validating that there are enough trained personnel to support the workload, organizations can reduce operational risks, respond effectively to incidents, and maintain high levels of availability. It is important to provide the right training, maintain sufficient staffing, and create on-call rotations to prevent burnout.
Validate Number of Trained Personnel
Have a mechanism in place to validate that you have the appropriate number of trained personnel to support your workload. This ensures that all necessary tasks, such as operations and incident management, can be handled effectively. Maintaining the right staffing levels reduces the risk of gaps in support coverage during normal operations and incidents.
Train Personnel on Platforms and Services
Ensure that all personnel are trained on the platforms, tools, and services that make up the workload. Training should cover both technical aspects and operational procedures, providing personnel with the knowledge needed to operate and troubleshoot the workload. Keeping personnel trained ensures that they can efficiently support ongoing operations and handle any incidents that occur.
Provide Knowledge to Operate the Workload
Provide comprehensive training programs that cover how to operate, maintain, and troubleshoot the workload. Personnel must understand the workload architecture, key dependencies, monitoring tools, and incident management protocols. This knowledge enables teams to handle incidents effectively, minimize downtime, and support workload reliability.
Maintain Adequate Staffing Levels
Ensure that there are enough personnel to support normal operations and troubleshoot incidents. Having sufficient staffing levels is essential for ensuring that all support tasks are performed in a timely manner and that there is adequate coverage during high-demand periods. This helps prevent any single point of failure and ensures redundancy in skills and roles.
Plan On-Call Rotation and Time Off
Develop an on-call rotation schedule to ensure that personnel are available to respond to incidents without being overburdened. Having enough personnel for effective on-call rotations and vacation coverage helps prevent burnout, ensuring that team members are always able to perform their duties effectively. Distributing on-call responsibilities also increases knowledge sharing and provides redundancy in expertise.
Supporting Questions
- How is the number of trained personnel validated to ensure appropriate staffing levels?
- What training mechanisms are used to ensure personnel are capable of supporting the workload?
- How do you manage on-call rotations and prevent burnout among personnel?
Roles and Responsibilities
Training Coordinator
Responsibilities:
- Develop and maintain training programs to ensure that personnel are trained on the workload platforms, tools, and operational procedures.
- Validate that training content is up-to-date and relevant to current workload requirements.
Operations Manager
Responsibilities:
- Validate that there are enough trained personnel to support the workload, ensuring adequate staffing levels.
- Plan on-call rotation schedules to prevent burnout and ensure continuous support for the workload.
Incident Responder
Responsibilities:
- Participate in training programs to understand workload architecture and troubleshooting procedures.
- Rotate on-call duties to ensure continuous workload support, providing incident response when needed.
Artifacts
- Training Plan: A document detailing training requirements, content, and schedules to ensure that personnel are knowledgeable about workload operations.
- Staffing and On-Call Rotation Schedule: A schedule specifying staffing levels, on-call rotations, and coverage for vacations or personal time.
- Operational Readiness Assessment: An assessment that evaluates the readiness of personnel to support the workload, including staffing levels and skills.
Relevant AWS Tools
Training and Certification Tools
- AWS Training and Certification: Provides access to training resources and certifications to ensure personnel are knowledgeable about AWS services used in the workload.
- AWS Skill Builder: Offers on-demand learning resources to help team members build knowledge about AWS services and operational best practices.
Staffing and Incident Management Tools
- AWS Systems Manager Incident Manager: Helps organize and manage incidents, providing personnel with runbooks and tools needed to respond to issues effectively.
- Amazon SNS (Simple Notification Service): Sends notifications for incidents, ensuring on-call personnel are promptly alerted and ready to respond.
Access Control Tools
- AWS IAM (Identity and Access Management): Manages personnel access to AWS resources, ensuring they have the appropriate permissions to support the workload during normal operations or on-call shifts.