Foundational Technical Review

For all AWS Partner-hosted solutions, passing the AWS Foundational Technical Review (FTR) requires you to complete an AWS Well-Architected Review (Review) to identify opportunities for improvement across all of the Well-Architected pillars.

You do not need to complete the remediation of identified issues to pass the FTR, only execute the Review. You can complete this assessment using either nOps or the AWS Well-Architected Tool accessible from the AWS Management Console.

PREPARATION CHECKLIST: Before you begin, you will need to gather the following:

Step 1: Once you’ve clicked on the link above (nOps Sign Up), you’ll be taken to the FTR user registration page.

Complete the signup process by entering your business email, company name, etc. and clicking “Sign Up.” Doing so will cause a verification email to be sent to you — please click it to verify your email address. If you do not receive the verification email, please check your Spam folder.

Congrats! You are now registered as an nOps user.

Connect your AWS account(s) where the resources in your workload live.

*You will need to have access to the master payer account if you are using organizations. Additionally, you will need permissions to create and run a CloudFormation stack and create IAM roles in your account.

Click + Add AWS Account on the right.

Or, click on your username in the top right and go to: Settings > AWS Accounts Click “Add a new AWS account.”

nOps has two setup options:

When adding a new AWS account, nOps will ask for the friendly name and the name of an S3 bucket where your CURs will be written. If you already have an S3 bucket for your CURs, you can add it here. Otherwise, nOps will attempt to create an S3 bucket.

Click “Setup Account” to be redirected to your AWS account.

*Please remember to log in to the AWS account that you want nOps to collect data from.

Agree to the CloudFormation template being able to create an IAM role and then click Create Stack.

Step 2 Once you have successfully added your AWS account to nOps, it will start the data ingestion process.

This process can take two to four hours, depending on the size of your AWS account. You should be able to see your AWS account in Settings > AWS Accounts > Active AWS Accounts.

AWS Accounts are now synced when this screen appears:

A workload, in nOps, is a dynamic collection of AWS resources. Workloads allow you to group and manage only the resources that match a particular query. Click “Workloads” in the top nav bar to be taken to the Workloads view.

Step 3 If this is the first time you have created a workload, you will be able to click “Create New Workload” in the middle of the screen. After that, the Create New Workload button will move to the top right of the window.

When you click “Create New Workload,” the workload creation pane will slide into view.

*At this time, creating workloads in your AWS account is not fully functional. Clicking the option can cause errors in your workload creation.

Step 4 After you have filled out the metadata for your workload, you can click the gray bar that says, “Specify Workload Resource,” causing the query builder to slide into view. nOps allows you to specify rules that define which resources will be added to the workload.

Click “Save” to create your workload.

Step 5 After you have created your workload, you will see the Workloads view. Here you can see a list of all workloads you’ve created, edit the query that builds your workload, and delete your workload.

Click on the workload to be taken to the Workload Summary view. In the Workload Summary view, you will see two sections.

Assessment Summary - An overview of how far into the assessment you are. - Workload Attachments - Any files and/or links attached to the workload are added to the report generated by nOps when the assessment is completed.

You might notice that the assessment is at a completion percentage greater than 0. This is normal and due to the fact that nOps uses its rules engine to discover information about the workload automatically. Click “Start Assessment” to begin the FTR Assessment.

For each question in the FTR, nOps will either automatically detect the answer to the question or allow you to answer it manually. Clicking on the box(es) in each section will designate that your workload meets or exceeds the particular requirements. You can add notes to a particular question by clicking “Add Note.” Hovering the mouse over the question will raise a context menu that gives you several options.

After you have answered the question, you can click “Submit Report,” enabling you to export the report to AWS as part of the FTR. Clicking “Exit Assessment” will return you to the summary screen where you can upload any additional documentation, see the assessment completion percentage, and export the report of the assessment.

Step 6 Once you have completed the FTR Assessment, you will need to export your completed FTR Report and send it to your Partner Solutions Architect via email. You will also need to include the following information:

nOps enables you to complete your FTR efficiently, but it can do far more than that. nOps lets you monitor, analyze, and manage an AWS Well-Architected infrastructure that is cost-optimized, secure, reliable, efficient, and operationally excellent — and help keep it that way through continuous compliance.

Click here to learn all you can do with nOps.