Comprehensive Guide to Enterprise-Scale Landing Zones in Azure
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Chapter 1: Understanding the Cloud Adoption Framework
The Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) is a crucial resource for organizations transitioning to Azure, particularly the Ready phase of CAF, which emphasizes Enterprise-Scale. For more detailed insights into CAF, check out my previous blog post.
The architecture outlined by the Cloud Adoption Framework for enterprise-scale landing zones acts as a strategic blueprint for an organization's Azure environment. This framework is modular, incorporating landing zones that address critical elements such as scalability, security, governance, and identity management, to facilitate both application migration and new deployments. The five foundational design principles are:
- Subscriptions for democratization
- Governance anchored in policy
- A unified control and management interface
- Application-centric and archetype-neutral design
- Coordination of Azure-native design and roadmap
Moreover, CAF's Enterprise-Scale provides a detailed compilation of design principles, concerns, and recommendations. To bridge the gap between on-premises data centers and cloud infrastructure, these eight design areas are pivotal. It's important to note that while adherence to the five design principles is essential, not every design guideline must be followed.
The eight design areas include:
- Enrollment in Enterprise Agreement (EA) and Azure Active Directory Tenant registration
- Identity and access management
- Organization and placement of management groups and subscriptions
- Network design and centralized connectivity
- Management and monitoring practices
- Business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR)
- Governance, security, and compliance measures
- Automation and DevOps platforms
Together, these architectural principles form what is known as the "Enterprise Scale Framework for Landing Zones."
Need for Enterprise Scale Landing Zone (ESLZ)?
As organizations embark on their Azure journey, they often see a gradual increase in resources and workloads. To help businesses determine what workloads to deploy and where, a single source of truth is necessary—one that provides guidance on adhering to enterprise guardrails that ensure security and compliance.
How to Begin Your Journey?
Having discussed the two key components of ESLZ—design concepts and architectural guidelines—let's shift focus to the crucial aspect of implementation. The open-source project CAF Terraform, which benefits from contributions by Microsoft’s site reliability engineers and architects, serves as an excellent starting point (check out the blueprint on GitHub).
Ready to Explore Further?
For a deeper understanding, follow my upcoming articles on CAF Terraform and its components to get started on your implementation journey.
- Part 1: What is the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) for Azure?
- Part 2: Ultimate Guide to Azure Cloud Adoption Framework for Enterprise-Scale Landing Zones
- Part 3: Implementing Azure Enterprise-Scale Landing Zone (ESLZ) with CAF Terraform - Part 1
- Part 4: Implementing Azure Landing Zone with CAF Terraform - Part 2
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Chapter 2: Practical Insights on ESLZ Implementation
This video provides a step-by-step guide on implementing Enterprise Scale Landing Zones in Azure using DevOps and automation techniques.
Learn how to effectively create an Azure Enterprise Scale Landing Zone, ensuring a robust architecture for your cloud environment.