The Well-Architected Framework is AWS’s set of best practices for building good cloud systems, organized into six pillars. The Cloud Practitioner exam likes to test that you know the pillars exist and roughly what each covers.
The six pillars
Operational Excellence, Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency, Cost Optimization, and Sustainability. When a question describes designing for a specific goal — say, minimizing cost or maximizing uptime — it maps to the matching pillar.
Test yourself
Which Well-Architected pillar focuses on the ability of a system to recover from failures and meet demand?
- Cost Optimization
- Reliability
- Operational Excellence
- Sustainability
👉 Click to reveal the answer & explanation
Correct answer: B. Reliability covers a system’s ability to recover from failures and scale to meet demand. Cost Optimization (A) is about spend; Operational Excellence (C) is about running and monitoring; Sustainability (D) is about environmental impact.
Related topics
AWS Trusted Advisor · Shared Responsibility Model · Auto Scaling
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