Azure Landing Zones

Azure Landing Zones are an essential part of an enterprise Azure Cloud environment. Azure Well-Architected Framework und Azure Cloud Adoption are essentials frameworks for enterprise-level cloud.

Lets have a look at how these frameworks and blueprints work together.

Transcript

1. Engineering Camp Azure Enterprise Architecture Landing Zones — What’s That All About? Alexander Eimer alexander.eimer@qaware.de
3. The cloud is like an undeveloped plot of land. And before a functioning city can emerge, you need planning, infrastructure, and clear regulations.
4. Steps to build our Smart City • Development Plan Rules, Governance, Process • Building Codes Materials, Structural Integrity, Traffic Planning • Initial Infrastructure Roads, Water, Electricity • Construction Automation Robots, Self-Driving Trucks, Exo-Scelets
5. Azure Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF)
6. What is the CAF? • Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) • High-Level strategy and process to introduce the Azure Cloud • Organizational approach • End-to-End guidance for a sustainable cloud adoption
7. CAF process https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-adoption-framework/overview
8. Cloud Adoption Scenarios https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-adoption-framework/scenarios/
9. Cloud Adoption Scenarios https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-adoption-framework/scenarios/ • AI adoption • Azure VMware Solution • Cloud-scale analytics • High-performance computing • Hybrid and multicloud • Modern application platform • Oracle • SAP • Virtual Desktops • Defense Goal: Accelerate cloud adoption journey
10. Cloud Adoption Scenario components • CAF itself • Microsoft Learn Training Role-based training to up-skill your personnel • Reference Architectures Templates for common technical scenarios • Well-Architected Framework Guides workload owners • Best Practices Guidelines for efficient solutions • Featured Azure products Use products that are known to be a good match for your strategy
11. Steps to build our Smart City • Development Plan ✅ Rules, Governance, Process Azure CAF • Building Codes Materials, Structural Integrity, Traffic Planning • Initial Infrastructure Roads, Water, Electricity • Construction Automation Robots, Self-Driving Trucks, Exo-Scelets
12. Well-Architected Framework
13. What is the Well-Architected Framework? • Goal: Scalable Cloud Infrastructure • Quality-driven tenets, architectural decision points, and review tools to help solution architects • Structured into Pillars ◦ and Design Principles ⇒ Guide to decision-making ◦ and Best Practices ⇒ Concrete implementation suggestions for Design Principles Best Practice Areas Questions Best Practices Pillars Design Principles Operational Excellence Security Reliability Performance Efficiency Cost Optimization
14. Content of the Azure WAF • Reliability Resiliency, availability, recovery • Security Data protection, threat detection, and mitigation • Cost Optimization Cost modeling, budgets, reduce waste • Operational Excellence Holistic observability, DevOps practices • Performance Efficiency Scalability, load testing Design Principles • Develop cost-management discipline • Design with a cost-efficiency mindset • Design for usage optimization • Design for rate optimization • Monitor and optimize over time Recommendation CO:04 Set spending guardrails Guardrails should include release gates, governance policies, resource limits, and access controls. Prioritize platform automation over manual processes.
15. Attention! What about AWS and GCP? https://www.embarc.de/well-architected-cloud-ueberblick/ AWS Azure Google Cloud Name Pillars - Operational Excellence - Security - Reliability - Performance Efficiency - Cost Optimization Pillar “Sustainability” Pillar “System Design” Related Frameworks AWS Well-Architected Framework Azure Well-Architected Framework Google Cloud Architecture Framework ❌ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌ AWS Cloud Adoption Framework Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure Google Cloud Adoption Framework
16. Steps to build our Smart City • Development Plan ✅ Rules, Governance, Process Azure CAF • Building Codes ✅ Materials, Structural Integrity, Traffic Planning Well-Architected Framework • Initial Infrastructure Roads, Water, Electricity • Construction Automation Robots, Self-Driving Trucks, Exo-Scelets
17. Landing Zones
18. What is an Azure Landing Zone? Part of the CAF in the “READY” stage Technical blueprint to implement Best Practices of Well-Architected Framework
19. Landing Zone Types • Platform landing zone ⇒ 3 Azure infrastructure LZs ◦ Identity subscription ◦ Management subscription ◦ Connectivity subscription • Application landing zone ⇒ Ready to use environment ◦ integrates into Platform Landingzone ◦ Prepares ground for application-team
20. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-adoption-framework/ready/landing-zone/
21. Steps to build our Smart City • Development Plan ✅ Rules, Governance, Process Azure CAF • Building Codes ✅ Materials, Structural Integrity, Traffic Planning Well-Architected Framework • Initial Infrastructure ✅ Roads, Water, Electricity Landing Zones • Construction Automation Robots, Self-Driving Trucks, Exo-Scelets
22. Platform Engineering & Developer Experience
23. Goals: Platform Engineering • App development teams are customer of a PE product • App teams can focus on building software • Provide opinionated standardized solutions • Encapsulate complexity for the app team • Scalability: A small PE team can manage many instances via automation • Ensures consistent, repeatable deployments without config drift • Ensure compliance and governance • Increase DX with e.g. golden paths and documentation • Enables potential self-service
24. PE x DX = 😻 Increasing the Developer Experience is a key goal of Platform Engineering
25. How to PE with Landing Zones? • IDPs are built on the Landing Zone concept • Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a must have ◦ for all Landing Zones ◦ for all IDPs building on those Landing Zones • Build PE teams from the beginning of your journey
26. Steps to build our Smart City • Development Plan ✅ Rules, Governance, Process Azure CAF • Building Codes ✅ Materials, Structural Integrity, Traffic Planning Well-Architected Framework • Initial Infrastructure ✅ Roads, Water, Electricity Landing Zones • Construction Automation ✅ Robots, Self-Driving Trucks, Exo-Scelets Platform Engineering / Developer Experience
27. Do these blueprints work across different cities (cloud providers)? ➡ Vendor Lock-In?
28. CAF: Yes you can… The Cloud Adoption Framework provides technical guidance for Microsoft Azure. Enterprise customers might still be trying to select a cloud vendor, or might have an intentional multicloud strategy. For these situations, the framework provides cloud-agnostic guidance for strategic decisions whenever possible. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-adoption-framework/overview
29. CAF: …, but But to avoid lock-in, organizations are required to limit their vision for cloud adoption. Many of the most beneficial products and features in a cloud provider are not portable to other cloud providers. To achieve portability and minimize lock-in, organizations are often required to limit cloud adoption to basic infrastructure as a service (IaaS) capabilities, or invest heavily in the use of cloud-native technologies like containers or Kubernetes. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-adoption-framework/scenarios/hybrid/
30. CAF Scenario: hybrid and multicloud There is a CAF scenario for Multi and Hybridcloud. It promotes a “Unified Operations” pattern. You should have one primary cloud provider. It has many notices on pitfalls to avoid… https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-adoption-framework/scenarios/hybrid/
31. Should I implement Multicloud? Adopting a cloud is also an organisational change. People need to be educated. Infrastructure like networking is per provider. Doing so for multiple provider is more expensive. Lock-In is not per-se a bad thing. If you run multicloud, there should be a business value behind it!
32. Q & A