Definitions

Foundational requirements are those whose scope extends beyond a single workload or project. Before architecting any system, foundational requirements that influence reliability should be in place.

In an on-premises environment, these requirements can cause long lead times due to dependencies and therefore must be incorporated during initial planning. With AWS, however, most of these foundational requirements are already incorporated or can be addressed as needed. The cloud is designed to be nearly limitless, so it's the responsibility of AWS to satisfy the requirement for sufficient networking and compute capacity, leaving you free to change the end user computing environment on demand.

A reliable Amazon WorkSpaces deployment starts with upfront design decisions for both software and infrastructure. Your architecture choices will impact your WorkSpaces behavior across the six Well-Architected pillars. For reliability, there are specific patterns you must follow to provide high availability and improve fault tolerance.

Use Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) for network isolation and security.

Changes to your Amazon WorkSpaces environment must be anticipated and accommodated to achieve reliable operation. Changes include those imposed on your WorkSpaces, such as spikes in demand, as well as those from within, such as feature deployments and security patches.

Use AWS CloudFormation, Service Catalog, or AWS Systems Manager to manage and automate changes to your WorkSpaces environment, creating consistency and reducing the risk of errors.

Amazon WorkSpaces are deployed in a specific AWS Region with built-in redundancies to protect against component failures. This provides high availability and minimizes downtime.

There is the potential for failures to impact your WorkSpaces environment. Therefore, you must take steps to implement resiliency if you need your WorkSpaces to be reliable.

Spread awareness amongst the people designing, implementing, and operating your Amazon WorkSpaces about business objectives and the required reliability goals to achieve them. Leaders or system owners must provide training and guidance to verify that individuals understand and can design for the reliability requirements pertinent to their roles.