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PERF01 - How do you select the best performing architecture?

Best Practices

PERF01-BP01 BP01 - Learn about and understand available cloud services and features PERF01-BP02 BP02 - Use guidance from your cloud provider or an appropriate partner to learn about architecture patterns and best practices PERF01-BP03 BP03 - Factor cost into architectural decisions PERF01-BP04 BP04 - Evaluate how trade-offs impact customers and architecture efficiency PERF01-BP05 BP05 - Use policies and reference architectures PERF01-BP06 BP06 - Use benchmarking to drive architectural decisions PERF01-BP07 BP07 - Use a data-driven approach for architectural choices

Best Practices

This question includes the following best practices:

Key Concepts

Performance Architecture Fundamentals

Workload profiling: Use this concept to guide architecture and operating decisions for this question area. Define measurable targets, assign clear ownership, and review results regularly against expected business outcomes.

Architecture patterns: Use this concept to guide architecture and operating decisions for this question area. Define measurable targets, assign clear ownership, and review results regularly against expected business outcomes.

Performance objectives: Use this concept to guide architecture and operating decisions for this question area. Define measurable targets, assign clear ownership, and review results regularly against expected business outcomes.

Optimization and Operations

Benchmarking strategy: Use this concept to guide architecture and operating decisions for this question area. Define measurable targets, assign clear ownership, and review results regularly against expected business outcomes.

Cost-performance tradeoffs: Use this concept to guide architecture and operating decisions for this question area. Define measurable targets, assign clear ownership, and review results regularly against expected business outcomes.

Scalability planning: Use this concept to guide architecture and operating decisions for this question area. Define measurable targets, assign clear ownership, and review results regularly against expected business outcomes.

Implementation Approach

1. Characterize workload demand

  • Define latency, throughput, and concurrency targets
  • Profile steady-state and peak traffic patterns
  • Identify critical request paths and bottlenecks
  • Document compliance and data locality constraints

2. Evaluate architecture options

  • Compare monolith, microservice, and event-driven approaches
  • Prefer managed services for undifferentiated heavy lifting
  • Assess network path and data flow performance implications
  • Model availability and scaling behaviors for each option

3. Validate with testing

  • Run load tests with representative production patterns
  • Capture baseline metrics for candidate architectures
  • Measure tail latency and saturation indicators
  • Select architecture that best meets SLOs and constraints

4. Iterate continuously

  • Review architecture fitness as demand changes
  • Adopt new AWS capabilities when they improve outcomes
  • Track performance regressions after releases
  • Retune architecture with evidence from telemetry

AWS Services to Consider

AWS Compute Optimizer

Analyzes usage telemetry and recommends resource sizing adjustments to improve performance and efficiency.

Amazon CloudWatch

Collects metrics, logs, alarms, and dashboards so teams can detect issues early and track operational outcomes.

AWS X-Ray

Traces distributed requests to identify latency bottlenecks and dependency failures across microservices.

AWS Well-Architected Tool

Captures workload reviews, risks, and improvement plans so teams can continuously track architecture quality.

AWS Fault Injection Service

Runs controlled chaos experiments to validate resilience and recovery mechanisms.

Common Challenges and Solutions

Challenge: Selecting architecture based on preference

Solution: Use measurable workload requirements and benchmark data as decision inputs.

Challenge: Ignoring peak and failure scenarios

Solution: Test performance under spikes and degraded dependency conditions before finalizing design.

Challenge: No periodic re-evaluation

Solution: Establish quarterly reviews to reassess architecture against changing usage patterns.

Related Resources