What's Azure Well-Architected Framework?
Tech consultant, MVP & MCT in Australia, focused on Azure, cybersecurity & Microsoft tech. Blogger & lifelong learner. 🙂
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The Azure Well-Architected Framework (WAF) is a set of best practices that help businesses create cloud apps that are safe, fast, robust, and don't cost too much.
Businesses can make sure their Azure workloads are optimised and in line with best practices and industry standards by using WAF.
The Five Pillars of the Azure Well-Architected Framework
1. Reliability: Reliability makes sure that an application can heal itself after something goes wrong and keep working as it should. Failures are going to happen in cloud settings, but if they are set up correctly, they shouldn't affect business continuity.
Key Reliability Strategies:
2. Security: Security is very important for any cloud workload. Business integrity is protected by following Zero Trust principles and keeping data safe from cyber dangers.
Key Security Best Practices:
3. Cost Optimization: To run a cloud workload efficiently, you need to find ways to cut costs without sacrificing speed.
Cost-Saving Strategies:
4. Operational Excellence: Operational excellence is all about making sure that cloud processes run smoothly by automating, monitoring, and managing them.
Key Operational Best Practices:
5. Performance Efficiency: Performance efficiency ensures that workloads run optimally under varying conditions.
Best Practices for Performance Efficiency:
The Five Pillars of the Azure Well-Architected Framework
1. Reliability: Reliability makes sure that an application can heal itself after something goes wrong and keep working as it should. Failures are going to happen in cloud settings, but if they are set up correctly, they shouldn't affect business continuity.
Key Reliability Strategies:
- Distribute workloads across multiple Azure regions using Availability Zones and Azure Load Balancer.
- Implement Azure Site Recovery (ASR) for business continuity.
- Use Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) or Azure Functions with retries and self-repairing capabilities.
- Conduct Chaos Engineering experiments with Azure Chaos Studio.
2. Security: Security is very important for any cloud workload. Business integrity is protected by following Zero Trust principles and keeping data safe from cyber dangers.
Key Security Best Practices:
- Use Entra ID and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC).
- Encrypt data at rest and in transit using Azure Key Vault and Azure Storage Service Encryption.
- Enable Microsoft Defender for Cloud for continuous security monitoring.
- Use Azure Firewall, Network Security Groups (NSGs), and Azure DDoS Protection.
3. Cost Optimization: To run a cloud workload efficiently, you need to find ways to cut costs without sacrificing speed.
Cost-Saving Strategies:
- Scale resources dynamically with Azure Autoscale.
- Pre-purchase compute capacity at reduced rates.
- Use Azure Cost Management + Billing to track spending.
- Reduce costs with Azure Functions and Azure Logic Apps.
4. Operational Excellence: Operational excellence is all about making sure that cloud processes run smoothly by automating, monitoring, and managing them.
Key Operational Best Practices:
- Implement Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and Application Insights for real-time monitoring.
- Use Azure DevOps, ARM Templates, Terraform, and Bicep for automated deployments.
- Apply Azure Policy and Azure Blueprints for compliance and governance.
- Set up Defender for Cloud alerts for proactive issue resolution.
5. Performance Efficiency: Performance efficiency ensures that workloads run optimally under varying conditions.
Best Practices for Performance Efficiency:
- Use Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS), Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), and Azure Functions.
- Improve performance using Azure CDN and Azure Front Door.
- Use Azure SQL Database Elastic Pools and Azure Cosmos DB for efficient data storage.
- Conduct performance tests with Azure Load Testing Service.
Tech consultant, MVP & MCT in Australia, focused on Azure, cybersecurity & Microsoft tech. Blogger & lifelong learner. 🙂
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