Designing for Success

As a Managed Service Provider (MSP), you are responsible for the design, deployment, and management of your customers’ cloud infrastructure. One of the most important things you can do to ensure the success of these projects, is to follow a well-architected framework. Microsoft has created the Well-Architected Framework (WAF) to help you do just that.

The WAF is designed to help Partners selling Azure deploy best practice solutions for their customers’ by providing a framework for evaluating and improving the overall design of a solution. It is organised around five pillars: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimisation. Each of these pillars includes a set of practices and design patterns that are intended to help you create a secure, reliable, and cost-effective cloud infrastructure.

One of the key benefits of using the WAF is that it helps you to think through the entire lifecycle of your customers’ cloud-based systems. It provides guidance on how to design and deploy systems that are secure, reliable, and cost-effective, as well as how to operate and optimise them over time. This allows you to anticipate and mitigate potential issues before they become problems, resulting in a smoother and more efficient delivery of your services.

Another benefit of the WAF is that it is designed to be platform-agnostic, meaning it can be applied to any cloud provider. This allows you to use the WAF as a guide regardless of the platform you choose to deploy your customers' infrastructure.

What are the Five Pillars of Microsoft’s Well Architected Framework?

Operational Excellence

Operational Excellence focused on the ongoing management and operations of a cloud-based system, and it includes a set of best practices and design patterns that help to ensure that the system is running smoothly and efficiently. To achieve this, the WAF recommends that MSPs implement several different practices, including:

• Defining and implementing clear processes for incident, change, and problem management.
• Implementing monitoring and logging strategies that provide visibility into the system's health and performance.
• Implementing automation strategies to reduce the need for manual intervention and to improve the speed and accuracy of system updates and maintenance.
• Implementing backup and disaster recovery strategies to ensure that data is protected and can be quickly restored in the event of a failure.

By implementing these practices, MSPs can ensure that their customers’ systems are running smoothly and efficiently, and that they are able to quickly detect and resolve any issues that arise. This can help to improve the overall satisfaction from the customer and minimise any disruptions and downtimes.

Security

Protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data and resources in a cloud-based system. These may include implementing:

• A strong identity and access management (IAM) system to control and monitor access to resources.
• Encrypting data both at rest and in transit to protect it from unauthorised access.
• Network security strategies to control and monitor access to the system.
• Security monitoring and logging to detect and respond to security incidents.
• Security testing and vulnerability management to identify and remediate security vulnerabilities.
• Incident response plan to have a well-defined process to follow when a security incident occurs.

MSPs can help to ensure that their customers' systems are secure, and that sensitive data is protected against unauthorised access. This can help to minimise the risk of security breaches and data loss, and to improve the overall security of the system.

Reliability

Ensure that cloud-based systems are available and able to recover from failures when they occur by implementing:

• High availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) strategies to ensure that the system can recover quickly from failures and outages.
• Monitoring and logging to detect and diagnose failures, so that they can be quickly resolved.
• Automated failure recovery mechanisms such as auto-scaling, self-healing and self-repairing.
• Testing and validation of recovery processes to ensure they work as expected.
• Change management processes to ensure that changes are made in a controlled and predictable way.

Help to ensure that your customers’ systems are reliable and that they can recover quickly from failures. This can help minimise the impact of outages on the customers’ businesses.

Performance efficiency

Ensure that a cloud-based system can handle the required workloads and that resources are used in the most efficient way possible. To achieve this, the WAF recommends that MSPs implement several different practices and design patterns, including:

• Scaling resources elastically to match the workloads and to avoid over provisioning.
• Optimising the use of compute, storage, and network resources to reduce costs and improve performance.
• Implementing caching and content delivery strategies to improve the speed and responsiveness of the system.
• Measuring and monitoring system performance to identify and resolve bottlenecks.
• Optimising the use of database and other storage resources to improve the performance of data-intensive workloads.
• Implementing performance testing to validate that the system can handle the expected workloads.

Ensure that customers’ systems are able to handle the required workloads and that resources are used in the most efficient way possible. This can help to improve the overall performance of the system and to minimise the cost of running it.

Cost optimisation

Minimise the cost of running a cloud-based system while still meeting the required performance, security, and reliability goals. To achieve this, the WAF recommends that MSPs implement a number of different practices and design patterns, including:

• Right-sizing resources to match the workloads, avoiding over provisioning and under provisioning.
• Automating the process of scaling and shutting down resources to reduce unnecessary usage and costs.
• Using reserved instances or other pricing options to reduce costs for long-term usage.
• Optimising the use of storage and network resources to reduce data transfer and storage costs.
• Using cost management tools to track and monitor spending, and identify areas where costs can be reduced.
• Regularly reviewing and optimising the cost of third-party services and solutions that are in use.

Ensure customers' systems are cost-effective and that resources are used in the most efficient way possible, which can help to minimise the total cost of running the system.

As an MSP, the Microsoft Well-Architected Framework (WAF) is a valuable tool for helping you design and deploy secure, reliable, and cost-effective cloud infrastructure for your customers. By following the WAF's best practices and guidelines, you can ensure that your customers' systems are well-architected from the start, which will result in fewer issues and a more successful outcome for your customers and your business

It's important to note that this framework is a continuous process that requires to be regularly reviewed and updated to keep up with new and evolving requirements.