Azure Landing Zone

Azure Landing Zone is a concept and set of guidelines provided by Microsoft Azure to help organizations establish a secure, well-architected, and scalable foundation in Azure. It provides a framework and best practices for deploying cloud workloads with standardized design patterns, governance policies, and security controls.

The goal of an Azure Landing Zone is to provide a consistent and repeatable approach to set up and manage Azure environments that align with an organization's requirements and compliance standards. It offers a structured approach for deploying landing zones, which are foundational environments for hosting workloads in Azure.

Key components and considerations in an Azure Landing Zone include:

1. Subscription Structure: The Azure Landing Zone defines a subscription structure that aligns with the organization's organizational hierarchy, security boundaries, and billing requirements. It may include different types of subscriptions, such as management subscriptions, shared services subscriptions, and workload-specific subscriptions.

2. Networking: The networking aspect of an Azure Landing Zone focuses on designing a secure and well-connected network infrastructure. This includes defining virtual networks (VNets), subnets, network security groups (NSGs), and network connectivity options like virtual private networks (VPNs) or Azure ExpressRoute.

3. Identity and Access Management: Azure Landing Zone incorporates identity and access management best practices to ensure proper authentication, authorization, and governance. This includes setting up Azure Active Directory (AAD), implementing role-based access control (RBAC) policies, and enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA) for secure access.

4. Security and Compliance: Azure Landing Zone provides guidance on implementing security controls, monitoring solutions, and compliance frameworks to meet regulatory requirements. It involves configuring Azure Security Center, implementing Azure Policy for governance, and enabling Azure Sentinel for centralized security monitoring and incident response.

5. Resource Hierarchy and Tagging: Azure Landing Zone defines a standardized resource hierarchy and tagging strategy to organize and manage resources effectively. It helps in tracking costs, applying policies, and managing resource lifecycles efficiently.

6. Landing Zone Deployment: Azure provides various tools and services, such as Azure Blueprints, Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates, and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) practices, to automate the deployment and management of Azure Landing Zones. These tools allow organizations to define and deploy a Landing Zone architecture consistently across different environments.

By following Azure Landing Zone guidelines, organizations can establish a strong foundation for their Azure environments. It enables them to deploy workloads securely, maintain compliance, streamline governance, and improve operational efficiency in the cloud.