Cloud Done Right: The AWS Well-Architected Framework Instrumented by New Relic

Whether you’re developing cloud native applications on Amazon Web Services (AWS) or modernizing existing applications and migrating them to AWS, you have many decisions to make throughout the application lifecycle. Some of the decisions will be based on opinion or experience, such as which language to use or which application programming interfaces (APIs) will be needed.

However, many of the decisions that you make—such as sizing for AWS instances or data storage type—should be based on data-driven best practices. Taking a data-led, best-practice approach helps you create a well-architected application and application environment on AWS.

That’s what the AWS Well-Architected Framework (WAF) is all about: providing “a consistent approach for customers and partners to evaluate architectures and implement designs that will scale over time.” 

The WAF is the result of years of experience with thousands of customers creating architectures that are built to be secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient. Based on five pillars—operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimization—the WAF offers detailed guidance, best practices, and foundational questions to evaluate and implement architectures that will scale over time. 

When instrumented with New Relic, the WAF pillars become part of an actionable observability platform for running the digital enterprise. New Relic One delivers the full visibility, context, and actionable insight from the end-user experience through the device, application, and into the infrastructure. This is essential to achieve the full benefits of each of the five pillars—a key success factor for companies that are truly customer obsessed.

With New Relic, you can understand:

• How well your applications and environment are aligned with the WAF

• Where there are opportunities to better align with the WAF

• Where there are risks in your current AWS environment and how you can mitigate them

This ebook can help you get started using New Relic to support the AWS WAF best practices. We’ll review each pillar along with examples of how New Relic can be used to instrument key portions using the metrics, events, logs, and traces (M.E.L.T.) telemetry data collected from your applications, infrastructure, and AWS services.