Are you planning to move your current workloads to the AWS cloud? Then, you must prepare for a successful Cloud Adaptation approach! With AWS Landing Zones, you can set up a multi-account AWS environment to deploy and support your highly-regulated workloads.
AWS cloud Landing Zones are well-architected cloud environments offering the most secure and scalable solutions for cloud migration and workload deployments.
So, building the foundation of the AWS Landing Zone is the starting point from which your organization can drive the ultimate Cloud Transformation. But are you aware of the best practices for creating AWS Landing Zones? Do you know the technical steps involved? Keep reading to establish an AWS environment with a multi-account architecture using Landing Zones!
What Are Landing Zones In AWS?
AWS Landing Zones are well-architected environments that support multi-account setups following certain AWS best practices. Building Landing Zones involves creating the account structure, networking components, and access management. Thus, setting up the multi-account environment using Landing Zones can take significant time.
When building the Landing Zones, you can follow the AWS best practices for prescriptive guidance and isolate your workloads into multiple accounts. AWS provides two implementation options: AWS Control Tower and Custom-built Landing Zone. We’ll discuss these later. Now, let’s focus on the primary purpose of using Landing Zones.
Why Implementing A Landing Zone Matters? What Are The Benefits?
- Structured Accounts: Landing Zones enforce a streamlined multi-account structure, simplifying management and eliminating resource sprawl.
- Simplified Governance: Built-in policies and pre-defined security and compliance standards save time with the well-governed cloud environment from the start.
- Security Baseline: Secure configurations across all accounts reduce misconfiguration risks and maintain the overall security posture.
- Cost Efficiency: Logical resource organization helps identify and eliminate unnecessary services to optimize your cloud spending.
- Rapid Deployment: Pre-configured settings in Landing Zones accelerate workload deployment by speeding up the development cycles.
- Centralized Monitoring: You get operational clarity through centralized logging and tracking, providing greater visibility for efficient resource management.
- Scalable Infrastructure: Multi-account architecture has flexible scaling features to allocate or de-allocate resources in your cloud infrastructure.
- Error Reduction: Pre-defined configurations with automated processes reduce human errors and create a more reliable cloud environment.
Explaining The Architectural Components Of An AWS Landing Zone
As it’s your first time building Landing Zones, we advise you to study the architecture diagram provided by AWS. It represents the core components of setting up the multi-account structure using Landing Zones:
Account Structure
- Organizational Units (OUs): OUs help you group and logically organize multiple AWS accounts. It makes it easy to apply policies and manage permissions across different stages of your development lifecycle.
- Root Management Account: This is where your main administrative actions take place. It houses all your OUs and provides a central point for managing your AWS environment.
Identity and Access Management (IAM)
- Least Privilege Principle: It states that permissions should be granted only to the minimum necessary to perform tasks. It minimizes security risks by preventing overprivileged access.
- Role-Based Access Control: RBAC assigns user permissions based on their work roles and functions. It simplifies management and ensures consistency across the organization.
Network Design
- VPC Architecture: Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) are the foundation of network isolation. Plan your VPCs with sufficient IP space and future expansion to accommodate growth.
- Subnet Segmentation: Divide your VPCs into subnets based on functions, such as web, application, and database tiers. It enhances security and allows for fine-grained traffic control.
Security Implementation
- Security Groups and Network ACLs: These act as virtual firewalls to protect the environment at the instance level. The Network ACLs secure subnet connections in use.
- AWS Config: This service tracks configuration changes and helps you enforce compliance with best practices. Thus, you can have a fully compliant AWS environment.
These components collectively create a secure, scalable, well-structured AWS environment as the foundational Landing Zone for your cloud operations. Now, let’s discover the different options for building Cloud Landing Zones!
Discovering Two Approaches For Creating Landing Zones On AWS
You have only two options for building your AWS Landing Zone. You can choose a managed service called the AWS Control Tower or the AWS Organizations with a partner-built custom solution to orchestrate your multi-cloud environment.
Keep reading to understand the different capabilities of both approaches so you can select the right strategy for your organization.
Using AWS Control Tower
This AWS-managed Service provides the easiest way to configure your multi-account environment and complete the landing zone setup. Its main advantages are:
- It comes with a well-architected foundational framework with pre-defined best practices.
- You can perform one-click cloud deployments directly from the AWS console.
- It incorporates AWS security recommendations based on your multi-environment setup.
- You can manage your AWS accounts and cloud resources from the AWS console.
That’s why this fully managed service is helpful for organizations with less expertise in cloud deployments. You can easily opt for this AWS service and avoid additional implementation complexities while building the Landing Zones!
Custom-Build Landing Zones Using AWS Organizations
If you don’t want a default setup using the AWS Control Tower, you can choose the custom-built solution and design the landing zone from scratch. Its main advantages are:
- Have complete control over the design and architecture to customize the landing zone.
- Implement configuration policies to align the landing zone with industry compliance.
- Adapt your landing zone to integrate seamlessly with your existing processes.
- Design a scalable infrastructure that can adapt based on your changing workloads.
Opting for a custom-built landing zone is ideal for organizations with specific requirements and expertise in cloud deployments. Even though this approach gives you enough flexibility to customize, you require professional expertise to create a highly optimized AWS environment.
AWS Best Practices For Creating A Cloud Landing Zone
So, if you decide to custom-configure the cloud landing zones in AWS, you must know the best practices to carry out seamless deployments. Here are the AWS-suggested best practices for building Landing Zones with a multi-cloud setup:
- Organizational Master Account: You can manage all cloud user accounts through the AWS root account. It provides a central point for governance as per your compliance policies.
- Core Accounts in OUs: These accounts handle essential functions like log archiving and security management. They can centralize critical operations and simplify overall management efforts.
- Team/Group Accounts in OUs: You can group various accounts as a team or a business unit to impose different policies and configurations on them.
- Developer Sandbox Accounts: You should provide your developers with dedicated “sandbox” environments to experiment and test without hampering production.
- Seamless Connectivity: Always use default networking patterns for efficient communication between accounts and external data centers for your hybrid or multi-cloud adoption.
- Advanced Security Controls: You should utilize AWS services like GuardDuty and AWS Config to automate threat detection and compliance checks.
- Automation with Infrastructure as Code: Create deployment templates using AWS CloudFormation or Terraform and automate different infrastructure provisioning activities.
With these advanced configurations, you can create a resilient and efficient cloud landing zone that supports your cloud operations and future deployments. Let’s discuss the bottlenecks you might face when building the AWS landing zone!
Handling The Implementation Challenges: What You Should Do?
Well, you are now well-equipped with enough knowledge about the implementation approaches and best practices for building cloud landing zones in AWS. But, you might encounter unexpected challenges or make common mistakes like:
- Skipping automation can lead to inconsistencies and increase manual workload.
- Not planning for scalability from the start can cause problems as cloud usage grows.
- Overlooking security configurations can leave your accounts vulnerable to threats.
- Not establishing clear governance policies can lead to account management issues.
- Ignoring cost optimization practices can result in unexpectedly high cloud bills.
So, how do you handle these challenges? Start by automating as much as possible to have consistent workload deployments without human intervention. Plan for scalability from the outset and regularly review your security configurations and governance policies. Indeed, you’ll be successful in creating landing zones and keeping your cloud deployments running smoothly.
Next Steps To Get Started With Cloud Landing Zones in AWS
Now, it’s time to take action. Start by exploring AWS Control Tower and AWS Organizations to finalize the right approach for building your AWS landing zones. Choose the best fit and kickstart your journey with pre-built guidance from AWS. Remember, you might have to change landing zone configurations when your cloud strategy matures. So, stay proactive and keep refining your setup!
FAQs
What is the AWS Landing Zone Solution?
This AWS service automates the multi-account setup process for creating secure and isolated AWS environments. It follows AWS’s best practices for security and scalability. This solution saves time by configuring multiple accounts and services. It’s perfect for large-scale migrations and production implementations.
Why is a multi-account setup a better choice when building AWS Landing Zones?
A multi-account setup enhances security by isolating different applications and data stores. It allows tailored control policies for various workloads. This setup simplifies billing and resource management across teams. Unlike a single account, it prevents resource limits from impacting other applications.
Does AWS Control Tower simplify the process of setting up a Landing Zone?
Yes. AWS Control Tower simplifies the setup process. It automates multi-account provisioning and applies best practices for security and governance. The user-friendly interface streamlines the initial implementation steps. So you can build the landing zones without any configuration errors.
Can I use AWS Landing Zones for my cloud migrations?
Yes. You can use AWS Landing Zones for your cloud migrations. It automates the setup process and ensures a secure environment. You get a scalable framework that supports large-scale migrations. Thus, you can save time and reduce cloud migration complexities.
What are the major functions of using AWS Landing Zones?
The framework of an AWS Landing Zone provides a standardized template for creating a multi-account environment. It automates the AWS account setup process based on the shared infrastructure requirements. Following other best practices, you can extend the default setup with custom Add-On solutions like Centralized Logging through the AWS Service Catalog.
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