Design principles

Well-Architected design principles are a set of considerations used as the basis for a well-architected workload. We recommend that you follow these design principles for a successful EUC implementation.

Evaluate the scope of your EUC use cases

Begin your design process by making an inventory of the various EUC use cases in your organization. Most organizations will have multiple user personas that have unique requirements. For example, the different use cases within the same organization may require varying:

Enumerate as much of this data as possible and use this data to inform the EUC design process.

Based on your inventory of user personas and their requirements, select the most appropriate EUC service for each use case. Learn the fundamental aspects of the core AWS EUC services. For optimal efficiency in implementing diverse use cases within your organization, you may need to use multiple EUC services.

Engage your AWS account team and the AWS EUC specialist team for additional guidance during any stage of your EUC journey. For more information, see Operational excellence.

Isolate EUC resources and minimize permissions

EUC services typically have different admin teams and security risk profiles from other AWS workloads. This means deploying EUC services in isolation by segregating them at the account boundary level. Consider any data sovereignty or regulatory compliance needs for your workloads (such as HIPAA, PCI, SOC, or FedRAMP) and use AWS guidance to build compliance-aligned workloads. Remove or block access to unneeded software. If required, control data egress using controls built into EUC services, such as client copy and paste, printer redirection, and upload and download functionality. Consider forwarding OS or application logs and using agents to validate security posture. Develop a vulnerability and patch management strategy to keep your instances and images secure and up to date with the latest security updates. For more information, see Security.

Design EUC solutions that maximize performance

Maximize client performance by deploying your EUC use cases near the user base. Similarly, deploy EUC use case dependencies (like directory services and file shares) near your EUC deployment to maximize application performance. Consider combining similar or overlapping use cases to reduce deployment and maintenance tasks. Consider separating use cases based on the different needs from your EUC use case inventory. For example, if use cases have different support teams or cost reporting needs, you may want to place them in different subnets, VPCs, or AWS accounts. When separating use cases, you still may be able to gain efficiencies by reusing images. Also, consider abstracting the applications from the images or creating a library of reusable scripts to deploy applications automatically. For more detail, see Performance efficiency.

Minimize EUC resources to optimize costs

Minimize resources needed to deliver your use cases, including instance and bundle types and fleet sizes. Review usage periodically to identify idle or underused resources (such as unused or over-provisioned instances, oversized fleets, and inefficient scaling policies). Deploy automated tools, such as the Cost Optimizer for Amazon WorkSpaces and the Cost Optimizer for Amazon WorkSpaces Applications,to help with this process. Use open-source OSes when use cases allow or bring your own OS licenses when available. For more detail, see Cost optimization.