Updated November 2026

Designing Well-Architected Solutions on AWS

Class Duration

35 hours of live training delivered over 5 days.

Student Prerequisites

Basic AWS services familiarity (EC2, S3, VPC)
Software development experience
Understanding of cloud computing concepts
Basic networking knowledge

Target Audience

Software engineers and solution architects who design systems on AWS. Engineers new to AWS should start with AWS Cloud Foundations. Teams building generative AI can go deeper with Generative AI on AWS with Amazon Bedrock, and teams with X-Ray SDK instrumentation can add Migrating from AWS X-Ray SDKs to OpenTelemetry.

Description

This course teaches software engineers to design AWS solutions with the Well-Architected Framework. Students apply its six pillars to compute, serverless, data, and network designs. Each module covers the trade-offs, such as when to pick EC2, containers, or Lambda. Later modules cover cost optimization, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, and observability with OpenTelemetry and CloudWatch. The course ends with architectures for generative AI on Amazon Bedrock and SageMaker AI.

Learning Outcomes

Apply the six Well-Architected pillars to solution design.
Run Well-Architected reviews with the Well-Architected Tool and lenses.
Design resilient compute with EC2, Auto Scaling, and load balancing.
Choose between ECS, EKS, Fargate, and Lambda for a workload.
Design serverless applications with Lambda, API Gateway, Step Functions, and EventBridge.
Design storage and data solutions with S3, RDS, Aurora, and DynamoDB.
Build S3-based data lakes with Iceberg tables, Glue, and Athena.
Design multi-AZ, multi-Region, and hybrid VPC networks.
Secure workloads with IAM, AWS WAF, Shield, GuardDuty, and Security Hub.
Apply cost optimization and tagging practices.
Deploy infrastructure with CloudFormation, the CDK, and Terraform.
Build CI/CD pipelines with CodePipeline and CodeBuild.
Instrument applications with OpenTelemetry, ADOT, and CloudWatch Application Signals.
Design generative AI applications on Amazon Bedrock and SageMaker AI.

Training Materials

Comprehensive courseware is distributed online at the start of class. All students receive a downloadable MP4 recording of the training.

Software Requirements

AWS Account with appropriate permissions
AWS CLI installed and configured
Code editor (VS Code recommended)
Git for version control
Web browser for AWS Console access

Training Topics

AWS Well-Architected Framework

The six pillars
Operational excellence and security
Reliability and performance efficiency
Cost optimization and sustainability
Using the Well-Architected Tool
Conducting Well-Architected reviews
The Serverless Applications lens
Generative AI and Responsible AI lenses
Remediation planning

Resilient Compute Architecture

EC2 instance families and Graviton
Placement groups and availability
Auto Scaling groups and scaling policies
Application and Network Load Balancers
Target groups and health checks
Choosing EC2, containers, or Lambda
ECS, EKS, and Fargate

Serverless Architecture Patterns

Lambda function design
API Gateway REST and HTTP APIs
Step Functions workflows
Event-driven design with EventBridge
Serverless patterns and anti-patterns

Storage and Data Architecture

S3 storage classes and lifecycle policies
Cross-Region replication and versioning
Choosing RDS or Aurora
DynamoDB design patterns
ElastiCache caching strategies

Data Lake and Analytics

S3-based data lake architecture
Apache Iceberg with Amazon S3 Tables
Lake Formation permissions
Athena query optimization
Partitioning and compression
ETL with AWS Glue

Advanced Network Architecture

Multi-AZ and multi-Region VPC design
VPC peering and Transit Gateway
VPN and Direct Connect
Amazon VPC Lattice
Route 53 routing policies
Network micro-segmentation

Security Architecture

AWS Organizations and Control Tower
IAM roles and policies
AWS WAF rules and rate limiting
AWS Shield Standard and Advanced
Threat detection with GuardDuty
Findings in AWS Security Hub
Encryption at rest and in transit

Cost Optimization and Management

Cost allocation tags
Reserved Instances and Savings Plans
Cost Explorer and budgets
Right-sizing with Compute Optimizer
Cost Optimization Hub
FinOps practices

Infrastructure as Code

CloudFormation templates and stacks
AWS CDK in TypeScript or Python
Cross-stack references and nested stacks
Terraform basics for multi-cloud
GitOps workflows

CI/CD and DevOps

CodePipeline multi-stage workflows
CodeBuild projects
Blue/green and canary deployments
GitHub Actions with OIDC federation
Automated testing strategies

Operational Excellence and Observability

CloudWatch dashboards, metrics, and alarms
Automated responses with EventBridge
Automation with Systems Manager
OpenTelemetry with ADOT
AWS X-Ray as the trace backend
X-Ray SDK maintenance mode
SLOs with CloudWatch Application Signals
CloudTrail and VPC Flow Logs
Incident response and troubleshooting

AI and Machine Learning Architecture

Amazon Bedrock models
Knowledge Bases and Guardrails
Agents on Amazon Bedrock AgentCore
SageMaker AI deployment patterns
AI/ML workflow orchestration
Responsible AI practices
Generative AI application architectures