The Azure Well-Architected Review is Worth Your Time

In July, Microsoft introduced the Azure Well-Architected Framework best practices — a guide for building and delivering solutions built with Azure’s best practices. If you’ve ever seen the AWS Well-Architected Framework, Azure’s will look… familiar. It strikes many similarities with the Google Cloud Architecture Framework as well, which was released in May. This is perhaps a sign that despite the frequently argued differences between the cloud providers (and people love to compare — by far the most-read post on this blog is this one on AWS vs. Azure vs. Google Cloud market share), they are more similar than different. Is this a bad thing? We would argue, no.

There are many aspects of a well-designed architecture and these frameworks to discuss. Given ParkMyCloud’s focus on cost here, we’ll examine the cost optimization principles in Azure’s framework and how they compare to AWS and Google’s.

Architecture Guidelines at a High Level

The three cloud providers each provide architecture frameworks with similar sets of principles. AWS and Azure use the “pillar” metaphor, and in fact, the pillars are almost identically named:

While at first it is somewhat amusing to note these similarities (did Azure just ctrl+c?), it is reassuring that between the major cloud providers, all can agree what components comprise the best architecture. Better yet, they are providing ever-improving resources, training, assessments and support for their users to learn and apply these best practices.

Who Should Use the Azure Well-Architected Framework — and How to Get Started

Speaking of users — which ones are these architecture frameworks for? In their announcement, Azure noted the shifting of responsibility of security, operations, and cost management from centralized teams toward the workload owner. While the truth of this statement will depend on the organization, we have recognized this shift as well.

So while Azure’s framework is aimed largely at new Azure users and/or new applications, we would recommend every Azure user skim the table of contents and take the well-architected review assessment. The assessment takes the form of a multiple-choice “quiz”. At the end of the assessment, you are given a score and results on a scale from 1 to 100. You are also linked to next steps with detailed articles for each question where there is room for improvement. This assessment is worth the time (and won’t take much of it), giving you a straightforward action plan.

There is also a set of Microsoft Learn pathways that should take about six hours to complete.

Cloud Cost Optimization Pillar Comparison

The architecture resources provided by Google Cloud are much briefer than AWS and Azure’s frameworks, and they combine performance and cost optimization into one principle, so it’s not surprising several topics are missing — including any discussion of governance or ownership of cost. AWS focuses on this the most, particularly with the new section on cloud financial management, but Azure certainly also discusses organizational structure, governance, centralization, tagging, and policies. We appreciate the stages of cost optimization Azure uses, from design, to provisioning, to monitoring, to optimizing.

All three cloud providers have similar recommendations in cost optimization regarding scalable design, using tagging for cost governance and visibility, using the most efficient resource cost models, and rightsizing.

Azure puts it this way: cost is important, but you should seek to achieve balance between all the pillars. Shoring up any of the other pillars will almost always increase costs. Invest in security first, then performance, then reliability. Operational excellence can increase or decrease costs. Cost optimization will always be important for any organization in public cloud, but it does not stand alone.

Originally published at www.parkmycloud.com on September 15, 2020.