The pandemic has given rise to an increased need to embrace cloud solutions. Cloud solutions are giving rise to fast, agile, and efficient workspaces from small-medium to large businesses. Also, organizations with a digital presence could easily adjust to the remote work scenario.
In this scenario, your organization cannot stay away from cloud computing and big data. Accenture research shows that if your business doesn’t adopt big data technologies, you may lose the competitive edge and fall out in the business market.
But, where to begin? You are right on track if you already have cloud computing in place.
However, if you yet to get started, don’t worry! You are still in the race. Adopt the well architected framework for Azure, and you are good to go.
The Azure well architected framework is a set of fundamental principles that help you configure the popular cloud computing platform, Azure. Microsoft started this cloud computing service and operates via the Microsoft data centers.
By setting up this well architected framework, you can avail major services like data management, storage services, computer services, messaging, media services, and more.
In this blog, let’s decode the basics of a well architected framework for Azure, how it can help your business get started with the cloud computing framework, its basic pillars and their utility, and more.
Let’s dive in!
A well architected framework for Azure is a set of guiding principles that helps you understand your solution’s design requirements and help improve the quality of the workload.
What is a Well Architected Framework?
A well architected framework for Azure is a set of guiding principles that helps you understand your solution’s design requirements and help improve the quality of the workload.
When you plan to use the Azure computing platform, you must first assess your existing workload. You can use the free service from Azure, Azure Advisor, and Advisor Score for assessment purposes.
Azure Advisor is a consulting service that analyzes your existing system and tells you how to optimize it for the Azure cloud computing platform. These suggestions take the form of an Advisor score. With this score, you get a clear idea of your work solutions and understand that they can be made cost-effective, secure, reliable, and more.
Azure Advisor and the Advisor Score corresponds to the five fundamental pillars or guiding tenets of the well architected framework for Azure.
Let’s understand these pillars in detail.
Basic Pillars of Well Architected Framework for Azure
A well architected framework for Azure consists of 5 fundamental pillars: reliability, security, cost-optimization, performance efficiency, and operational excellence.
Reliability
The reliability of your Azure framework gives you an idea of the resilience of your system to workload failures. Are they able to bounce back quickly after a downtime? Can your users access the workload without much interruption?
As an organization, you need to understand the capabilities of your service level agreements thoroughly. A well defined recovery point objective (RPO), recovery time objective (RTO), and robust backup ensure that your system can get up running smoothly, even after major network outages or data security issues.
Security
Azure’s well architected framework provides enhanced protection against DDoS attacks and network intrusion threats. However, organizations should follow a multilayered approach for cloud security.
These tactics include firewalls, encryption tactics, modernizing infrastructure security, establishing a safe distance between your organizational assets and their threats, etc. Using the shared responsibility model of the well architected framework, organizations can focus on core business activities while leaving the system security to the cloud service provider.
Cost-Optimization
With the cost-optimization pillar of the well architected framework, you learn to use cost-effective cloud solutions for your organization. You should analyze the cost of shifting from on-premises to cloud solutions and monthly billing statements to see which model works out best for you.
Pay as you go model is popular for cloud solutions where you don’t have to go for a recurring subscription model. You only need to pay for the services you use. Also, you can scale up/down based on your business requirements.
Performance Efficiency
Performance efficiency considers the scalability factor of organizations and how well they can optimize storage-network within acceptable limits. There are two means to achieve this objective.
One, you can use a messaging layer to ensure data partition, thereby enhancing better system performance. Second, caching can help reduce the data retrieval from databases and application servers.
Operational Excellence
With the operational excellence pillar of the well architected framework, you can ensure that your system operations are well automated to function at an optimum level. Automating repetitive functions ensure that there are minimal delays and minimal human intervention.
Also, the well architected framework has inbuilt monitoring and diagnostics capability to spot errors and correct them on the go.
Design Principles to Consider While Designing a Well Architected Framework for Azure
While designing a well architected framework for Azure, ensure that you focus on automation, make data-driven decisions, and focus on dynamic education.
Focus on Automation
Automation is a core principle of the computing platform. With automation, you can reduce manual, redundant tasks and ensure operational efficiency at the workplace. In this way, you can minimize human errors and ensure consistency between different operating environments.
Ensure Data-Driven Decision Making
Organizations should harness the right data to make informed decision-making. Usually, data guides give you information like user load and performance to data cost. These data metrics show you the performance of your system, and you can finetune it based on your organizational requirements.
Enabling Dynamic Education
The cloud architectural framework is becoming very popular among businesses. Hence it’s necessary that all teams like operations, development, marketing, and sales are on the same page.
There should be a mechanism for dynamic sharing of cloud knowledge as and when your system evolves. You can create a system of internal documentation like knowledge bases and company intranet to keep your employees updated with the developments.
Conclusion
A well architected framework forms the basis of organizational functioning in a cloud environment. It ensures that your business meets its custom requirements and scales up on the go. The pillars mentioned above of the Azure framework ensure that organizations can set up an automated, cost-efficient, effective, and reliable working platform.
