Architecting AWS Landing Zone with Optimal Practices and Design Strategies

Introduction

AWS Landing Zone simplifies establishing a secure AWS environment by centralizing account management, automating landing zone creation, and enforcing governance. This section explores the core components of AWS Landing Zone architecture, including AWS Organizations, Control Tower, Service Catalog, and RAM, offering insights into best practices to enhance AWS management efficiency.

• AWS organizations facilitate the centralized management of multiple AWS accounts, allowing for creating and enforcing policies across the organization. Optimal usage within an AWS Landing Zone involves creating a multi-account environment to segregate data storage and processing, enhancing security and compliance. Additionally, leveraging AWS Organizations to establish a payer account linked with multiple accounts enables centralized cost management and monitoring. Reduce the risk of compliance violations.
• AWS Control Tower configures a secure and compliant landing zone using predefined blueprints and automated guardrails. In an AWS Landing Zone, deploying a Control Tower within the payer account enables centralized management and monitoring of the landing zone. Additionally, implementing guardrails guarantees that the landing zone stays secure and compliant, adhering to established standards.
• AWS Service Catalog enables centralized management and distribution of approved IT services while controlling access to these services. In an AWS Landing Zone setup, the Service Catalog ensures consistency of IT services across the organization and enables controlled access to authorized users, enhancing governance and compliance measures.
• AWS Resource Access Manager (RAM) simplifies resource sharing across accounts and governs access to these resources. Incorporating RAM into an AWS Landing Zone promotes uniform resource sharing throughout the organization and guarantees that solely authorized users can access shared resources, strengthening security and governance protocols.

Architecture

The Landing Zone Accelerator on AWS architecture diagram provides a high-level overview of the solution’s components and how they interact to establish a secure and compliant cloud foundation.

1. Management Account: The management account is the central account for the Landing Zone Accelerator deployment. It is used to manage the other accounts in the environment and to configure security and compliance settings.

2. Core: The core components of the Landing Zone Accelerator are responsible for account creation, drift detection, key management, and centralized logging.

• Account Creation: The account creation module automates the establishment of AWS accounts, following the specifications outlined in YAML configuration files.
• Configuration Drift Detection: The drift detection feature persistently observes the cloud environment for deviations from the intended configuration. When discrepancies are identified, the system issues alerts and suggests remedial actions.
• Encryption Key Management: The key management system offers a secure and centralized approach to handling encryption keys, ensuring robust security measures.
• Unified Logging: The unified logging feature gathers and archives logs from every account within the environment. This creates a consolidated and comprehensive view of infrastructure activity, enhancing visibility across the entire system.

3. Source: The source components of the Landing Zone Accelerator are responsible for managing the configuration and deployment of the solution.

• AWS CodeCommit: The AWS CodeCommit repository stores the YAML configuration files that define the desired infrastructure, security, and compliance settings for the Landing Zone Accelerator deployment.
• GitHub: The GitHub repository contains the open-source Landing Zone Accelerator code.

4. Build: The build components of the Landing Zone Accelerator are responsible for building and deploying the solution’s infrastructure and configuration.

• AWS CodeBuild: The AWS CodeBuild project builds the Landing Zone Accelerator infrastructure and configuration artifacts.
• AWS Step Functions: The AWS Step Functions workflow automates the Landing Zone Accelerator infrastructure deployment and configuration artifacts to the AWS environment.

5. Deployment Stages: The deployment stages of the Landing Zone Accelerator are responsible for creating the initial AWS accounts, configuring the network topology, and deploying the Landing Zone Accelerator infrastructure and configuration.

• Environment Configuration: The environment configuration stage creates the initial AWS accounts and configures the network topology based on the configuration defined in the YAML configuration files.
• Landing Zone Accelerator Deployment: The Landing Zone Accelerator deployment stage deploys the Landing Zone Accelerator infrastructure and configuration artifacts to the AWS environment.

6. Workload Accounts: The workload accounts are the AWS accounts that will be used to host your workloads. These accounts are created and managed by the Landing Zone Accelerator.

Conclusion

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