Well-Architected Tool

What is Well-Architected Tool?

Cloud governance spans three stages: learning, measurement, and optimization. Well-Architected Tool in Agentic Cloud Governance Center applies subjective measurement throughout your product lifecycle to:

● Record architectural decisions.

● Recommend workload improvements based on best practices.

● 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. Depending on business complexity, a workload may includeservers, 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 of the above. 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 by comparing the best practices you select against 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 in time. Save multiple milestones to track evaluation and improvement progress.

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

The Alibaba Cloud Well-Architected questionnaire and other questionnaires provided by Well-Architected Tool are updated when new services launch, existing best practices evolve, or new best practices are added. When a new version is available, Well-Architected Tool sends an upgrade notification. You can choose whether to upgrade.

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 state before the update for future reference.

After a questionnaire is upgraded, when you continue to evaluate a workload, the newly upgraded questions are marked with the icon, helping you quickly locate and re-evaluate them.

References

Alibaba Cloud Well-Architected Framework