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How to Prepare for Your AWS Foundational Technical Review (FTR): A Checklist for Success



If you’re building on AWS and planning to launch through the AWS Partner Network, you’ve probably heard of the Foundational Technical Review (FTR). It’s not just a formality — it’s a crucial step that validates your architecture against AWS best practices across security, reliability, and operational excellence.

Whether you're aiming to unlock co-sell opportunities, list on AWS Marketplace, or strengthen your product’s infrastructure, passing the FTR is essential. In fact, if you’re an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) planning to sell your product through AWS Marketplace, the FTR is mandatory and may be required more than once as your product evolves.

Here’s your practical, engineer-approved checklist to help you prepare — and get it right the first time.

1. Understand the FTR Scope


Before diving into technical details, understand what AWS is looking for:

  • Security: Is your data encrypted at rest and in transit?

  • Reliability: Can your application recover from failure automatically?

  • Operational Excellence: Do you monitor and manage your workloads effectively?


Tip: Review the AWS FTR Requirements and the Well-Architected Framework to understand the review criteria.

2. Review the AWS Well-Architected Framework

The FTR is based on the AWS Well-Architected Framework, which outlines best practices across six pillars. For FTR purposes, focus especially on:

  • Security (e.g. IAM configuration, data protection, secrets management)

  • Reliability (e.g. failover, backups, multi-AZ architecture)

  • Operational Excellence (e.g. automation, observability, documented procedures)

Running your workload through the AWS Well-Architected Tool is highly recommended to uncover early gaps.


3. Prepare Your Documentation


AWS expects clear and current documentation:


  • Architecture diagrams (clearly labelled with AWS services)

  • Runbooks and playbooks for operations and incident response

  • Security and backup policies

  • Monitoring dashboards or screenshots

  • Deployment pipeline overview (CI/CD or Infrastructure as Code)


This isn’t about theory — the FTR is a review of what’s deployed and operational.


4. Address Security and Compliance Gaps


Security is a core focus of the FTR. Check for the following:


  • Use of least privilege IAM roles

  • Encryption at rest and in transit for all data stores

  • Regular secret rotation and key management

  • MFA enforcement for all administrative users

  • Logging and alerting via services like CloudTrail, GuardDuty, or SIEM integrations


5. Build in Resilience


FTR reviewers want to see evidence that your workload is fault-tolerant:


  • Multi-AZ deployments and automated failover

  • Stateless, horizontally scalable service design

  • Automated recovery via ASGs, Lambda retries, SQS DLQs

  • Regularly tested backup and disaster recovery plans


6. Demonstrate Operational Excellence


This often-overlooked pillar is essential to FTR success:


  • Monitoring in place (e.g. CloudWatch, Datadog, or Prometheus)

  • Automated deployments via CodePipeline, GitHub Actions, or similar

  • Use of Infrastructure as Code (e.g. Terraform, CloudFormation)

  • Documented runbooks for expected issues and remediation steps


7. Engage a Review Partner (Optional, but Recommended)


Working with an AWS Consulting Partner can streamline the FTR process. At 6pillars, our automated FTR tooling and hands-on support have helped dozens of ISVs pass their reviews faster — and with fewer remediation cycles.


  • Conduct a pre-FTR gap analysis

  • Automate reporting and remediation tracking

  • Liaise with AWS on your behalf

  • Reduce time-to-market with AUTOMATE+, our scalable review automation tool



Why It Matters


AWS statistics show that more than 70% of ISVs who attempt the FTR alone never complete it. At 6pillars, 100% of our supported clients pass their AWS FTR, thanks to our review automation tools, cloud-native architecture expertise, and partnership with AWS as an ISV Accelerate Partner.


Let’s Chat


If you'd like to arrange a chat or see a guided demo of our FTR automation platform, you can book directly here:


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Use our in-house GPT-based assistant to guide you through AWS Well-Architected reviews and documentation — built specifically for AWS-native workloads.


Join the Community


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Come join us for an evening of technical deep dives, case studies, and informal networking over pizza, beer, or a glass of red.



 
 
 

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