Month: May 2021

7 Best AWS Whitepapers and Guides for Enterprise

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This post is a first of its kind. It is a summary of my recent thoughts about AWS Cloud as a system and how to manage it. More insights will follow.

Disclaimer: This post is on my own and doesn’t necessarily represent Amazon Web Services’s positions, strategies, or opinions.

Let’s imagine you are an employee of a medium or large size enterprise. Let’s imagine the enterprise is investing in Cloud services. Some teams are moving their workloads to Cloud, some are not doing it yet, but senior management is convinced that company’s IT future will be going hand in hand with Cloud technologies.

A number of accounts is growing and management made a decision to establish centralized Cloud governance and create… Let’s call it Cloud Infrastructure Management team. And you are member of this team. Your task is to create a scalable and robust mechanisms to perform administrative and management tasks of your Cloud infrastructure.

So, where do you start?

The list of AWS Whitepapers and Guides below will help you to build a foundation of theoretical knowledge and practical advices. It is far from complete and covers only tiny percentage of publicly available AWS documentation.

  1. Assess where the company in stages of Cloud adoption is and familiarize yourself with AWS Cloud Adoption Framework. To create any route you need to know where you are. The same applies for an organization that going through technological transformation and adopting Cloud.
  2. A corner stone of Cloud governance system is you and your team. Read about Cloud Enablement Engine team, how to structure it, what responsibilities does it have and a lot more. Use this whitepaper as a prescriptive guidance for organizational and technological improvements.
  3. Learn about how to organize your AWS Cloud environment. This monumental whitepaper will explain you how to create most efficient AWS Organizations structure, transform your multiple isolated accounts into secure and reliable system with hierarchy and OUs (Organizational Units). It will take time to build it, so be patient.
  4. Read about AWS Share Responsibility Model and deliver this knowledge to everybody in your organization who build applications on top of AWS Services.
  5. Make sure you build your AWS environment with Cost Optimization in my mind. This whitepaper will teach you what are key Cost Optimization pillars, introduce you Cloud Financial Management theory and tools you will use for Cloud costs analysis and forecasting
  6. Start to investigate how to architect applications in the cloud. You will use AWS Well-Architected Framework on every stages of application lifecycle – development, deployment and operations.
  7. And last but not least – ramp up your or other team members with Cloud knowledge. This collection of AWS Ramp-up Guides will be a starting point for lifting up AWS competence and help your organization to be successful in Cloud.

Education is a never ending process and much more excellent AWS Whitepapers and Guides are available for you.

What is your list of best materials about Cloud? Share your thoughts and suggestions in comments section!