How to Design a Landing Zone for Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure

Biswanath Giri

15 min readJul 25, 2023

Google Cloud

Key Elements of GCP Landing Zone

1️⃣ Cloud Identity & organization

2️⃣Users & groups

3️⃣Administrative access

4️⃣Billing

5️⃣Hierarchy & Access

6️⃣Networking

7️⃣Centralize logging

8️⃣Monitoring

9️⃣Security

1️⃣0️⃣Support

GCP Landing Zone Overview

Landing zone design in Google Cloud involves creating a well-structured and secure foundation for your cloud environment. A landing zone provides a standardized framework to deploy and manage cloud resources, ensuring consistency, security, and compliance across your organization’s projects. Here are the key components and considerations for designing a landing zone in Google Cloud:

1️⃣Identity and Access Management (IAM):

Implement robust IAM policies to manage user access and permissions within the landing zone. Define roles with appropriate privileges to ensure the principle of least privilege, granting users only the necessary access for their specific tasks

2️⃣Users & groups

Users in GCP:

Users in GCP represent individuals who require access to resources and services within a GCP project.
Users are associated with Google Accounts or Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) accounts.
Each user can be assigned different roles and permissions, which determine their level of access to specific resources.

Service Accounts:

Service accounts are specialized user accounts used by applications and services to interact with GCP resources programmatically.
Unlike regular users, service accounts do not represent individual people but are associated with specific applications or services.
Service accounts have associated private keys or JSON Web Tokens (JWT) for authentication purposes when making API calls to GCP services.

Groups:

Groups in GCP are collections of individual users and service accounts.
By organizing users and service accounts into groups, access control can be managed at a group level, reducing administrative overhead.
Permissions can be granted to entire groups, streamlining the process of assigning access rights to multiple users or applications.

Roles and Permissions:

In GCP’s Identity and Access Management (IAM) system, roles define sets of permissions that grant access to specific GCP resources.
Roles can be broad, such as Owner (full access), or more granular, such as Viewer (read-only access).
Different roles can be assigned to users and groups based on their responsibilities and required access levels.

Custom Roles:

While GCP offers predefined roles, custom roles can be created to tailor permissions to specific needs.
Custom roles allow for more precise control over access rights, ensuring adherence to organization-specific security requirements.

Organization Node and Folder IAM:

IAM policies can be set at the organization level to apply access controls across all projects within the organization.
Additionally, IAM policies can be applied at the folder level, enabling consistent access management for groups of projects.

Best Practices:

Apply the principle of least privilege when assigning roles and permissions to users and groups.
Utilize groups to efficiently manage access control, particularly for larger teams or multiple projects.
Regularly review and audit access permissions to ensure alignment with current requirements and security standards.
Use service accounts for programmatic access, limiting their scope to only the necessary resources.
Avoid sharing individual account credentials and instead leverage groups for effective access management.

3️⃣Administrative access

In Google Cloud Platform (GCP), IAM (Identity and Access Management) roles are used to grant administrative access to users, service accounts, and groups. These roles define sets of permissions that determine what actions users can perform on GCP resources. When assigning administrative access, it’s crucial to carefully consider the scope of each role to ensure the principle of least privilege is followed. Here are some essential IAM roles for administrative access in GCP:

Owner:

The Owner role grants full control over all resources within a GCP project.
Owners have the highest level of administrative access, allowing them to create, modify, and delete resources across the entire project.
They can also manage IAM policies, add/remove users, and set billing settings.

Editor:

The Editor role provides broad access to create, modify, and delete resources within a GCP project.
Editors can manage and configure most resources, but they do not have the ability to modify IAM policies or billing settings.

Viewer:

The Viewer role offers read-only access to resources within a GCP project.
Viewers can see the configuration and state of resources but cannot make any modifications.

Project IAM Admin:

The Project IAM Admin role grants permissions to manage IAM policies for a project.
Users with this role can add/remove users, assign roles, and control access to resources within the project.

Project Billing Admin:

The Project Billing Admin role allows users to manage billing settings for a GCP project.
Users with this role can view billing information, link/unlink billing accounts, and set budget alerts.

Organization Admin:

The Organization Admin role provides administrative access at the organization level.
Users with this role can manage IAM policies and resources across all projects within the organization.

Organization Owner:

The Organization Owner role has the highest administrative access at the organization level.
Owners can manage IAM policies, billing settings, and resources across all projects within the organization.

Custom Roles:

In addition to the predefined roles, GCP allows you to create custom roles with specific permissions tailored to your organization’s requirements.
Custom roles enable fine-grained control over administrative access.

4️⃣What type of billing account do you prefer?

Resource Hierarchy: Organize your cloud resources using a hierarchical structure to facilitate efficient management and access control. The hierarchy typically includes an organization node at the top, under which you have projects, folders, and resources. Proper resource organization simplifies billing, resource categorization, and project administration.

5️⃣Choose a resource hierarchy model

3. Networking: Create a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) to establish a secure and isolated network environment for your resources. Design and configure subnets within the VPC to segment resources and apply firewall rules to control traffic flow.

6️⃣Multiple host projects with multiple Shared VPC networks

7️⃣Centralized logging and monitoring in Google Cloud Platform.

Centralized logging in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) refers to the practice of collecting and storing log data from various services and resources within the GCP environment in a centralized location. This approach streamlines log management, analysis, and troubleshooting, making it easier to gain insights into the overall health and performance of your cloud resources. Here’s an overview of GCP centralized logging:

1. Stackdriver Logging:

Google Cloud’s native logging solution is called Stackdriver Logging.
Stackdriver Logging allows you to collect, view, and analyze logs from different GCP services, virtual machines, and applications.

2. Log Sources:

Stackdriver Logging supports a wide range of log sources, including GCP services such as Compute Engine, App Engine, Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Storage, Cloud Pub/Sub, and more.
Additionally, you can send custom logs from your applications using the Stackdriver Logging API.

3. Log Entries:

Log entries represent individual log events generated by various services and resources.
Each log entry contains metadata, including timestamp, severity level, log message, and other contextual information.

4. Log Filters and Metrics:

Stackdriver Logging allows you to filter and search log entries using query language and advanced filtering options.
You can create custom metrics based on log entries to track specific events or behaviors.

5. Log Sinks:

To centralize logs, you can create log sinks to export logs to different destinations, such as BigQuery, Cloud Storage, or Cloud Pub/Sub.
Log sinks enable you to store logs in a centralized location for long-term retention, analysis, or integration with other tools.

6. Monitoring and Alerting:

Stackdriver Logging is integrated with Stackdriver Monitoring, allowing you to set up alerting based on log metrics and create monitoring dashboards for log analysis.

7. Access Control:

Stackdriver Logging supports IAM (Identity and Access Management) controls, enabling you to manage access to logs based on user roles and permissions.

8. Log Explorer:

The Log Explorer in the Google Cloud Console provides a user-friendly interface to search, filter, and analyze logs interactively.

9. Integration with Google Cloud Services:

Centralized logging with Stackdriver Logging is seamlessly integrated with other Google Cloud services, enabling you to gain insights into the overall health of your GCP environment.

8️⃣Security and Compliance:

Implement robust security controls to protect your landing zone from unauthorized access and potential threats. This includes enabling encryption at rest and in transit, setting up logging and monitoring for proactive security monitoring, implementing identity and access controls, and adhering to compliance standards.

9️⃣Google Cloud Platform (GCP) offers different support plans

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) offers different support plans to meet the diverse needs of its customers. The support plans are designed to provide varying levels of technical assistance, response times, and access to resources.

1. Basic Support:

2. Standard Support:

3. Enhanced Support:

4. Premium Support:

Here checkout the terraform code to provision the landing zone

GCP landing zones — Terraform module design consideration

New — AWS Control Tower Account Factory for Terraform

Introduction:

AWS Control Tower is a powerful service that helps organizations set up and govern a secure multi-account AWS environment. As part of Control Tower’s capabilities, the Account Factory enables the automated and scalable creation of AWS accounts with pre-configured guardrails and best practices. In this blog, we will explore how to leverage Terraform to automate the AWS Control Tower Account Factory, streamlining the process of creating new accounts with standardized configurations. Let’s dive into the details!

Understanding AWS Control Tower Account Factory

An overview of AWS Control Tower and its benefits in managing multi-account AWS environments.
Introduction to the Account Factory and its role in automated account provisioning.
Key components and concepts involved in the Account Factory process.

Preparing the Terraform Environment

Setting up the Terraform environment and configuring AWS credentials.
Overview of Terraform modules and how they simplify resource provisioning.
Reviewing the required AWS Control Tower Terraform provider.

Terraform Code for Account Factory Automation

Writing Terraform code to create a new AWS Control Tower account.
Configuring account settings such as account name, email, and tags.
Implementing resource sharing and guardrail enforcement for the new account.
Applying additional configurations, such as AWS Single Sign-On (SSO) integration.

Handling Approval and Governance

Implementing approval workflows for new account creation using Terraform.
Integrating with AWS Service Catalog for custom guardrail enforcement.
Leveraging AWS Organizations and Service Control Policies (SCPs) for governance.

Best Practices and Considerations

Following best practices for Terraform code organization and reusability.
Managing state files and securing sensitive information.
Implementing version control for infrastructure-as-code (IaC) management.

Automated Account Provisioning in Action

Demonstrating the automated account creation process with Terraform and Control Tower.
Discussing potential use cases for account factory automation.
Analyzing the benefits of using Terraform for Account Factory.

Limitations and Future Enhancements

Addressing potential limitations or constraints of automating Account Factory with Terraform.
Exploring opportunities for future improvements and integrations.

Here you check out terraform code provision AWS Contol Tower

New - AWS Control Tower Account Factory for Terraform | Amazon Web Services

AWS Control Tower makes it easier to set up and manage a secure, multi-account AWS environment. AWS Control Tower uses…

aws.amazon.com

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/apn/automating-your-aws-landing-zone-deployment-to-speed-up-large-scale-migrations/

Landing Zone Best Practices

AWS Landing Zones are a great way to get started with AWS. They provide a pre-configured environment that includes all of the necessary infrastructure, such as VPCs, subnets, IAM roles, and security groups. This can save you a lot of time and effort, especially if you are new to AWS.

However, deploying an AWS Landing Zone can be a complex and time-consuming process. If you are planning to migrate a large number of workloads to AWS, you will need to automate the deployment of your Landing Zone. This will help you to speed up the migration process and reduce the risk of errors.

There are a number of tools that you can use to automate the deployment of your AWS Landing Zone. One popular option is AWS Control Tower. AWS Control Tower is a managed service that provides a central console for managing your AWS accounts and resources. It also includes a number of features that can help you to automate the deployment of your Landing Zone, such as:

Blueprints: Blueprints are pre-configured templates that you can use to deploy common AWS Landing Zones.
Account Vending Machine (AVM): AVM is a tool that you can use to automate the creation of new AWS accounts.
Policy automation: AWS Control Tower can automatically create and manage IAM policies for your Landing Zone.

If you are looking for a more flexible option, you can use Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools such as Terraform or CloudFormation. IaC tools allow you to define your Landing Zone resources in code. You can then use these tools to automate the deployment of your Landing Zone.

Benefits of Automating AWS Landing Zone Deployment

There are a number of benefits to automating the deployment of your AWS Landing Zone. These benefits include:

Speed: Automating the deployment of your Landing Zone can save you a lot of time. This is especially beneficial if you are planning to migrate a large number of workloads to AWS.
Accuracy: Automating the deployment of your Landing Zone can help you to reduce the risk of errors. This is because the deployment process is repeatable and consistent.
Cost savings: Automating the deployment of your Landing Zone can help you to save money. This is because you will not need to hire consultants or contractors to deploy your Landing Zone manually.
Compliance: Automating the deployment of your Landing Zone can help you to comply with security and compliance regulations. This is because you can use the same configuration for all of your AWS accounts and resources.

How to Automate AWS Landing Zone Deployment

There are a number of steps involved in automating the deployment of your AWS Landing Zone. These steps include:

Plan your Landing Zone: The first step is to plan your Landing Zone. This includes defining the resources that you need, such as VPCs, subnets, IAM roles, and security groups.
Design your Landing Zone: Once you have planned your Landing Zone, you need to design it. This includes creating a diagram of your Landing Zone and defining the relationships between the different resources.
Choose a deployment tool: The next step is to choose a deployment tool. You can use AWS Control Tower, IaC tools such as Terraform or CloudFormation, or a combination of both.
Create your deployment artifacts: Once you have chosen a deployment tool, you need to create your deployment artifacts. This includes the code that you will use to deploy your Landing Zone.
Deploy your Landing Zone: The final step is to deploy your Landing Zone. This is where you will use the deployment artifacts that you created in the previous step.

Azure landing zones — Terraform module design considerations

Azure landing zones are a fundamental concept in building a secure, scalable, and well-structured cloud environment on Microsoft Azure. They provide a foundation for deploying workloads and services while adhering to best practices and compliance requirements. Terraform, as an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool, plays a vital role in automating the deployment and management of Azure landing zones. In this blog, we will explore the essential considerations for designing Terraform modules to implement Azure landing zones effectively. Let’s delve into the details!

Understanding Azure Landing Zones

Overview of Azure landing zones and their significance in cloud infrastructure design.
Benefits of using Terraform for building and managing landing zones on Azure.
Key components and design principles of an effective landing zone.

Planning the Terraform Module Structure

Designing a modular architecture for Terraform modules to promote reusability and maintainability.
Organizing resources into logical modules based on landing zone components (networking, identity, security, etc.).
Deciding on naming conventions and input variables for enhanced flexibility.

Terraform Module for Networking

Creating a Terraform module to define Virtual Networks, Subnets, and Network Security Groups (NSGs).
Configuring peering and connectivity options between landing zones.
Implementing resource tagging and consistency across modules.

Terraform Module for Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Building a Terraform module to manage Azure Active Directory (AD) resources and roles.
Configuring role-based access control (RBAC) for granular permissions.
Integrating with Azure AD B2B for external user access.

Terraform Module for Security and Compliance

Developing a Terraform module for security controls, such as Azure Policy and Security Center.
Implementing encryption, auditing, and monitoring mechanisms.
Enforcing compliance standards and best practices across landing zones.

Terraform Module for Application Workloads

Designing a Terraform module for deploying applications and services within landing zones.
Defining virtual machines, managed services, and storage resources.
Integrating with Azure DevOps for continuous deployment.

Best Practices and Error Handling

Incorporating best practices in Terraform module design to ensure efficiency and consistency.
Handling errors and exceptions gracefully for smooth deployments.
Using Terraform Workspaces for managing multiple environments.

Version Control and Continuous Integration

Implementing version control for Terraform modules using Git.
Integrating with Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines.
Ensuring automated testing and validation of Terraform code.

Terraform State Management and Backends

Understanding Terraform state and the importance of state management.
Choosing suitable state backends for collaboration and scalability.
Securing sensitive data in Terraform state.

Real-world Use Cases and Considerations

Examining real-world scenarios and use cases for deploying Azure landing zones with Terraform.
Considering factors like scalability, high availability, and multi-region deployments.

Here you check out the terraform code to provision Azure Landing Zones

Azure landing zones - Terraform module design considerations - Azure Architecture Center

Design considerations for the Azure landing zones Terraform module.

learn.microsoft.com

Conclusion:

Designing a landing zone is a crucial step in establishing a solid foundation for cloud environments on Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure. A well-designed landing zone ensures consistency, security, and scalability while aligning with an organization’s unique requirements and compliance standards. Let’s summarize the key takeaways from our exploration of designing landing zones for each cloud platform

Google Cloud:

Google Cloud’s landing zone design involves identity provisioning, resource hierarchy, networking, and security controls.
Implementing robust IAM policies ensures secure user access and privileges.
Organizing resources within a hierarchical structure simplifies management and access control.
Configuring Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) and subnets establishes a secure network environment.
Implementing security controls, encryption, and monitoring enhances cloud security.
Leveraging automation and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) streamlines resource provisioning and management.

AWS:

AWS landing zone design encompasses account structure, IAM, networking, and security.
Utilizing AWS Organizations and IAM roles helps manage multiple accounts and permissions.
Setting up Amazon VPC and subnets enables secure network segmentation.
Leveraging AWS security features like AWS Config and CloudTrail enhances governance and compliance.
Employing AWS CloudFormation for IaC automates resource deployment and management.

Azure:

Azure landing zone design involves components like Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates, networking, IAM, and security.
Implementing ARM templates facilitates standardized and repeatable resource deployment.
Azure RBAC enables granular access control to resources.
Designing Azure Virtual Networks (VNets) and Network Security Groups (NSGs) establishes secure network architecture.
Utilizing Azure Policy and Security Center ensures compliance and governance.

In conclusion, each cloud platform offers unique tools and features for designing landing zones, and the choice depends on an organization’s specific needs, existing infrastructure, and familiarity with the cloud provider. Designing a landing zone requires careful consideration of security, governance, scalability, and cost optimization. Additionally, leveraging Infrastructure as Code tools like Terraform simplifies the implementation and management of landing zones, enabling organizations to streamline deployments, achieve consistency, and enhance overall cloud operations.

Ultimately, a well-designed landing zone serves as the backbone of a successful cloud strategy, paving the way for optimized cloud workloads, secure data management, and seamless innovation in the rapidly evolving world of cloud computing.

About Me

I am having experienced IT professional with a passion for helping businesses embark on their journey to the cloud. With over 14+ years of industry experience, I currently serve as a Google Cloud Principal architect, specializing in assisting customers in building highly scalable and efficient solutions on the Google Cloud Platform. My expertise lies in infrastructure and zero trust security, google cloud networking, and cloud infrastructure building using Terraform. I hold several prestigious certifications, including Google Cloud Certified, HashiCorp Certified, Microsoft Azure Certified, and Amazon AWS Certified.

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Google Cloud Certified — Cloud Digital Leader.
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