Intro
imagine ur the architect of this massive growing org right and ur job is basically to design a secure compliant scalable aws environment that wont fall apart when business needs change which they always do. u gotta ensure the right governance is there sensitive data is locked down and everything can scale up. sounds like a headache honestly but with aws control tower u actually have a shot at making this work without losing ur mind
lets go on a trip thru the cloud setting up a landing zone using control tower and seeing how organizational units aka OUs can be the backbone of ur security game
1. Building the foundation: the org management account
so every solid landing zone starts somewhere and that somewhere is the organization management account. think of this as the heart of ur aws world where policies access and the basic structure live. its where u define global security rules and where control tower actually does its magic
for me it all starts by making this org management account the master key to everything. first step i take is locking this thing down tight access control everything because if this account gets compromised its game over
2. The structure takes shape: OUs and governance
now that the management account is chillin i start carving out the structure. this is where control tower is actually super useful. using organizational units i make a hierarchy that actually makes sense for the business
i always gotta balance letting devs do their thing while keeping control. for big companies i usually set up separate OUs for security production and staging just to keep sanity
so i generally define some high level OUs
- security ou – the gatekeeper making sure audits happen
- production ou – where the money is made live services live here
- staging ou – the playground where we break stuff before prod
3. Nested OUs: a growing ecosystem
as the org gets bigger the aws environment gets messy so to keep it clean i start nesting OUs. this is basically putting folders inside folders but for cloud accounts
now i gotta support multiple teams so i typically make groups like app-1 and app-2 each with their own prod and staging accounts. this ensures app-1 cant mess with app-2s stuff. nice and isolated
then the internal ops need love too so i make an internal operations OU with sub-OUs for finance hr and it departments so hr doesnt accidentally delete the finance database
4. Audit and compliance: the log archive
structure is done but u need visibility. audit logs compliance retention policies all that boring but super critical stuff needs to be set up so u dont fail an audit
i set up audit and log archive accounts immediately. these are like the black box of an airplane immutable records of everything that happens. logs go in they dont come out (unless u need to investigate something) and automated backups keep everything safe
5. The real magic: terraform and automation with AFT
ok so the structure is cool and all but clicking buttons in the console is for amateurs. we want speed and consistency. enter the aws control tower account factory for terraform or AFT for short. this is where things get super interesting because now we are treating our account vending machine as code
check this out u can use this module here
https://registry.terraform.io/modules/aws-ia/control_tower_account_factory/aws/latest
and the code lives here
https://github.com/aws-ia/terraform-aws-control_tower_account_factory
so instead of manually provisioning accounts i deploy AFT. now when a new team needs an account they just push a change to a terraform repo. AFT sees the change spins up the account using control tower and then—this is the best part—it automatically applies all the baseline customization. we are talking setting up security groups iam roles and connecting to the vpc automatically. no human error just pure automation pipelines running smooth
it basically lets u maintain a global account customization repo so every single account that gets birthed by control tower comes out pre-configured with my specific tooling and security baselines right out of the box. massive time saver
6. Conclusion: a secure scalable future
so i step back drink some coffee and look at the dashboard. i didnt just build some servers i built a foundation. the org is secure scalable and aligned with business goals. thanks to control tower and that sweet AFT automation the journey from a messy handful of accounts to a compliant enterprise grade environment was actually kinda smooth and easy access and control setup with IAM Identity Centre SSO & Directory Services which we can integrate with Azure EntraID as well :)
Top comments (1)
Insightful Amaan