Well-Architected Tool

What is Well-Architected Tool?

Cloud governance spans three stages: learning, measurement, and optimization. Well-Architected Tool helps you measure workloads against best practices throughout the product lifecycle:

● Records architectural decisions.

● Recommends workload improvements based on best practices.

● Helps make workloads more reliable, secure, efficient, and cost-effective.

Well-Architected Tool measures your workloads against the Alibaba Cloud Well-Architected Framework, a set of best practices developed by solution architects with extensive enterprise experience. It provides a consistent methodology for evaluating system architecture and guiding cloud architecture design. Target users include CTOs, architects, developers, and operations teams.

Create a workload

A cloud workload is a set of cloud resources and features that support business operations, such as servers, VMs, containers, networks, and databases.

1. Log on to Well-Architected Tool.

2. On the Workload page, click Create.

3. In the Create Workload panel, configure the following parameters: Workload Name, Description, Review Owner, Environment, Add Tag (Optional), and Apply Questionnaire.

   Alibaba Cloud Well-Architected Lens is selected by default.

4. Click OK.

After creation, you can view, edit, or delete the workload as needed.

Evaluate a workload

1. On the Workload page, click the name of the target workload.

2. On the workload details page, click the Review Report tab, and then click Start Evaluation or Continue Evaluation.

3. Complete the evaluation questionnaire.

   The questionnaire covers best practices across five dimensions: Security, Reliability, Cost Optimization, Operational Excellence, and Performance Efficiency.

   For each question, determine whether it applies to your workload.

   • If a question does not apply to your workload, select Inapplicable Question and choose a reason.

   • If a question applies, select the best practices your workload follows. If none apply, select None. You can also mark individual best practices as inapplicable and specify a reason.

   Note

   Click the question mark icon next to a best practice to view its details.

4. Click Save and Exit.

   You can save your progress and resume later without completing the questionnaire in one session.

View an evaluation report

Well-Architected Tool identifies high-level and medium-level risks based on the best practices you select and the Alibaba Cloud Well-Architected Framework.

1. On the workload details page, view the identified risks on the Assessment Report tab.

2. Click Governance Recommendations to view recommendations for an issue.

3. Click a risk name to modify the selected best practices and add remarks to record improvements.

4. Click Save and Exit to update the workload's status.

Download an evaluation report

On the right side of the workload details page, in the Well-Architected Tool Review Report area, click Download Report to download the Review Report as a PDF.

Save a milestone

A milestone captures the evaluation state of a workload at a specific point. Save multiple milestones to track evaluation and improvement progress over time.

1. On the workload details page, click the Assessment Report tab, and then click Save Milestone in the upper-right corner.

2. In the Save Milestone dialog box, enter a milestone name and click OK.

View a milestone

1. On the workload details page, click the Milestone tab to view the list of milestones.

2. Find the target milestone and click its name to view the evaluation history.

3. Click View review in the upper-right corner to view historical lens answers.

Update a questionnaire

Questionnaires are updated when new services launch or best practices change. Well-Architected Tool notifies you when a new version is available. You can choose whether to update.

1. On the workload details page, click the Assessment Report tab, and then click Upgrade lens version in the upper-right corner.

2. On the Update lens version page, view the differences between the previous and new versions of the questionnaire.

3. If you decide to upgrade, enter a milestone name, select I understand and accept these changes., and then click Confirm.

   This milestone preserves the evaluation status before the update for future reference.

After an update, the icon appears next to newly raised risks, helping you identify and re-evaluate them.

References

Introduction