Appendix: Operational Excellence (Prepare) - AWS Well-Architected Framework Study Guide

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Appendix: Operational Excellence

How do you design your workload so that you can understand its state?

• Implement application telemetry
• Implement and configure workload telemetry
• Implement user activity telemetry
• Implement dependency telemetry
• Implement transaction traceability

How do you reduce defects, ease remediation, and improve flow into production?

• Use version control
• Test and validate changes
• Use configuration management systems
• Use build and deployment management systems
• Perform patch management
• Share design standards
• Implement practices to improve code quality
• Use multiple environments
• Make frequent, small, reversible changes
• Fully automate integration and deployment

How do you mitigate deployment risks?

• Plan for unsuccessful changes
• Test and validate changes
• Use deployment management systems
• Test using limited deployments
• Deploy using parallel environments
• Deploy frequent, small, reversible changes
• Fully automate integration and deployment
• Automate testing and rollback

How do you know that you are ready to support a workload?

• Ensure personnel capability
• Ensure consistent review of operational readiness
• Use runbooks to perform procedures
• Use playbooks to investigate issues
• Make informed decisions to deploy systems and changes

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