AWS Well-Architected Review
AWS Advanced Consulting Partner
AWS Well-Architected Review
Get a prioritized view of how your AWS workload performs across security, reliability, cost, performance, operations, and sustainability, plus a remediation roadmap your team can act on.
Complimentary initial review
Scoped to the workload or decision that matters now.
Prioritized remediation roadmap
Actions ranked by risk, effort, and business impact.
AWS funding for eligible fixes
We identify incentives for qualified next-phase work.
Request a Well-Architected Review
Tell us which workload, initiative, or architecture decision you want to evaluate.
What is an AWS Well-Architected Review?
An AWS Well-Architected Review, also called a Well-Architected Framework Review (WAFR), is a structured working session that evaluates an existing workload against the AWS Well-Architected Framework. It shows what's working, where risk or inefficiency has built up, and which improvements to make first, tied to the priorities your business cares about, from release velocity to risk management to long-term cloud cost.
What We Review
The review can cover a complete workload or begin with the two or three pillars most relevant to a current initiative. We assess architecture, operations, and decision tradeoffs with the people who know the workload best.
We evaluate
- Business priorities and workload context
- Architecture, dependencies, and recovery approach
- Operational practices, monitoring, and change management
- Security controls, identity, and data protection
- Cost drivers, performance needs, and growth expectations
You receive
- A current-state architecture review across the agreed pillars
- High-risk issues and improvement opportunities, ranked by business impact and effort
- A remediation roadmap with required actions and recommended sequencing
- Guidance on AWS funding for eligible remediation work
When to Do a Review
A review adds the most value before a significant business or technical decision, while there's still time to compare options. Common triggers:
- Before a major release, migration, or modernization effort
- After a material architecture change or incident
- When cloud costs or performance need closer attention
- As security, compliance, or recovery requirements evolve
- When a workload becomes more important to customers or operations
- When newer AWS services or design patterns could replace what you originally built
6 Pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework
AWS uses six pillars to evaluate the decisions that shape a workload. Reviewing them together exposes tradeoffs, like a cost reduction that weakens resilience.
1. Operational Excellence
Run, monitor, and improve workloads through clear operating practices and automation.
2. Security
Protect information, systems, and assets through risk assessment and effective controls.
3. Reliability
Recover from disruption and meet demand through tested, resilient architecture.
4. Performance Efficiency
Use computing resources efficiently as demand and technology needs change.
5. Cost Optimization
Align cloud spending with business value and resource requirements.
6. Sustainability
Understand and reduce the environmental impact of cloud workloads where appropriate.
Review Process
Define the Focus
We identify the workload, participants, business goals, and AWS pillars that will provide the most useful starting point.
Review the Workload
Stratus10 facilitates a focused review of the architecture, operational practices, and tradeoffs with the people responsible for the workload.
Prioritize Improvements
Findings are organized by risk, effort, and expected value so your team can decide what to address first and what to plan for later.
Implement, Track, and Revisit
Your team works through the roadmap, tracks progress, and revisits the workload at major milestones.
How Peachjar Used Well-Architected Practices
Peachjar’s small engineering team needed a faster path to production and more time for product work instead of routine cloud management.
Stratus10 applied Well-Architected practices through recurring architecture conversations and prioritized improvement work. The team evaluated cost, performance, reliability, security, scalability, and engineering effort together rather than treating cloud spend as an isolated number.
The work surfaced practical opportunities, including right-sizing a reporting workload that ran only once a month, evaluating a serverless database approach for spiky demand, and moving selected services to AWS-managed options. The result was an ongoing feedback loop for assessing changes and directing the next improvement.
See the Peachjar Story
Peachjar’s director of engineering and Stratus10's CTO, Kevin RisonChu, discuss how Well-Architected practices informed cost, architecture, and engineering decisions in this AWS Partnercast webinar.
Selected Results
A Prioritized Path to SOC 2 Readiness
An in-depth assessment evaluated cloud architecture, identity, application delivery, and infrastructure against the CIS Benchmark, AWS Well-Architected Framework, and SOC 2 requirements.
From Monthly Releases to Multiple Deployments per Day
A more reliable AWS environment and automated delivery process gave the team a faster path from tested code to production.
Multi-Account Governance Built for Growth
A structured AWS foundation improved visibility, governance, and repeatability as the organization expanded its cloud environment.
Frequently Asked Questions
The scope is agreed at the outset. It can cover the full framework or the pillars most relevant to a workload, current initiative, or decision.
Most reviews require only a few hours of your team's time, often split into shorter sessions by pillar. Stratus10 handles the analysis and prepares the findings. The best participants are the people who build, run, and secure the workload.
Your team can remediate in-house or Stratus10 can scope the fix as a follow-on project. Some remediation work qualifies for AWS funding.
Some prioritized remediation work may qualify for AWS funding or incentives. Stratus10 identifies relevant options based on the proposed work and current AWS program requirements.
Review a workload before major lifecycle decisions, after material architecture changes, and as business, security, cost, or resilience requirements evolve. The right cadence depends on the workload and its rate of change.
Request an AWS Well-Architected Review
Pick one workload. We'll review it against the framework and hand back a roadmap your team can act on.
Request a Well-Architected Review
Share the workload or decision you want to evaluate, and we will help define the best place to start.