Author Spotlight: Seth Eliot, Principal Reliability Solutions Architect at AWS

The Author Spotlight series pulls back the curtain on some of AWS’s most prolific authors. Read on to find out more about our very own Seth Eliot’s journey, in his own words!

At Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Amazon, we talk about “super powers” a lot. Everyone has them! I’ve discovered that mine is to take technical topics and make them actionable for builders and internal/external stakeholders at all levels.

As Principal Reliability Solutions Architect for AWS Well-Architected, I work with customers on topics such as disaster recovery, assessing resilience, and chaos engineering. What I really enjoyabout this role is how much I learn every day. Customers always have new challenges, and I love finding new solutions for them. At events like AWS Global Summits or AWS re:Invent, I enjoy interacting with customers, such as when I run Chalk Talks, where I answer questions from the audience about reliability in the cloud.

Prior to joining AWS, I was a Solutions Architect for one of AWS’s biggest customers—Amazon.com! I traveled around the world to work hands-on with Amazon developers in places like Japan and Luxembourg to help modernize their workloads on AWS and get the most out of AWS technologies, like serverless and containers. Meeting face-to-face with folks and helping them use these technologies was really rewarding and very educational.

I’ve also worked as a Principal Engineer with Amazon Fresh grocery delivery and Amazon International Technology. These were two very different areas to work in, but they both have development teams all over the world that I was honored to help with their software design, agile development, and career guidance. By now, you’re likely noticing a pattern in my career…?

If you go back a bit further, I spent about 5 years working “across the lake” from Amazon HQ in Seattle, Washington, at Microsoft in Redmond during a really interesting moment in their history: moving, culturally and technically, from a “box product” company to one that creates software services. I am proud to have played a role in that move!

I am a “boomerang,” meaning that I actually was with Amazon prior to my time with Microsoft, and I came back. During my first stint here, I worked on the original team that launched what would become Prime Video. Back then, it was download-only experience (not streaming) and called “Amazon Unbox.” From where I sit now, it is amazing to see how the product has evolved.

Throughout these experiences, the thing that keeps me going is the opportunity to help builders and stakeholders to solve their hard problems. There is nothing more satisfying than after meeting with a person or team, getting feedback from them that I was able to help them.

Seth’s favorite posts!

What’s New in the Well-Architected Reliability Pillar?

My first AWS blog post! The real work was updating the AWS Well-Architected Reliability Pillar itself. I enjoyed collaborating with many smart experts across AWS to harness their diverse perspectives in the pillar update. Enjoy the read!

Disaster Recovery (DR) Architecture on AWS series

• Disaster Recovery (DR) Architecture on AWS, Part I: Strategies for Recovery in the Cloud – Learning best practices for disaster recovery (DR) is a frequent request I get from AWS customers. The cloud lets you set up DR strategies to meet your business needs, and this blog post explains how to get started.
• Disaster Recovery (DR) Architecture on AWS, Part II: Backup and Restore with Rapid Recovery – As a strategy, backup and restore sometimes gets a bad rap because it is not as sophisticated as the other stategies. But simple can be good! I call this the Swiss Army knife of DR strategies—it can be used many different situations. Learn about it here.
• Disaster Recovery (DR) Architecture on AWS, Part III: Pilot Light and Warm Standby – For fast recovery (low RTO and RPO), without the added complexity of active/active architecture, these strategies hit the sweet spot.
• Disaster Recovery (DR) Architecture on AWS, Part IV: Multi-site Active/Active – The best of both worlds! High availability and the fastest DR recovery you can implement.

Building Resilient Well-Architected Workloads Using AWS Resilience Hub

I was really excited by the release of AWS Resilience Hub (and was honored to be part of developing it). Finally, many of the best practices I talk about with customers are now automatically assessed against your workload with recommendations.

Creating a Multi-Region Application with AWS Services series

• Creating a Multi-Region Application with AWS Services – Part 2, Data and Replication – A follow-up to Part 1: multi-AZ (Availability Zone) is a must for high availability. But, some workloads can benefit from a multi-Region approach too (defense in layers). This blog shares the ins and out of how to deploy and use AWS data stores and databases across multiple AWS Regions.
• Creating a Multi-Region Application with AWS Services – Part 3, Application Management and Monitoring – If you are going to go multi-Region, you also must have the monitoring and governance tools in place. Learn how to implement them with this post.