A Landing Zone is a well-established environment that can help you deliver real business value. That’s why a Google Cloud Landing Zone helps you lay the foundational framework of your Google Cloud environment.
This article will explore everything you need to know about Google Cloud Landing Zone, its features, how it differs from other management tools, and its advantages.
What is Google Cloud Landing Zone?
The Google Cloud Landing Zone is a set of optimal practices that help your company or organization to set up an effective cloud environment on GCP. It helps automate and configure deploying GCP services, including storage, computing instances, and networking.
How it works
The Landing Zone helps organize resources through a “landing zone hierarchy.” The Hierarchy lets you organize a set of pre-configured resources, policies, and controls over the GCP.
Moreover, this hierarchy follows a top-to-bottom approach and includes multiple levels that include:
Foundational level.
Shared services level.
Workload level.
Every level has its own resources and controls. The implementation of each level depends on:
Design choices.
Industry you work in.
Security and compliance requirements.
Type of workload you want to migrate to cloud.
Key features of Google Cloud Landing Zone
Whether you’re improving your current deployment, building a new Google Cloud, or just experimenting with the platform, the Google Cloud Landing Zone gives you greater agility with an optimized cloud.
Here are some key features the Landing Zone offers:
It is a fully automated development of a production-ready environment.
Sets a solid foundation for all future migrations and new deployments you’ll do on the Cloud.
Enables application migrations and greenfield development at any scale.
It offers centralized logging and monitoring of your resources on the cloud.
It features secure networking and access controls, compliance policies, integrated IAM, Security Command Center, VPC configurations, bucket policies, and more.
How does it differ from other cloud management tools?
Google Cloud Landing Zone uses a prescriptive approach, providing pre-defined and standardized guidelines for deploying and managing infrastructure on the GCP.
When compared to other platforms, it offers a set of unique features. Let’s look at some of them below.
1
Automation and templating
GC Landing Zone has a stronger focus on automation than other services like AWS Landing Zone or IBM Cloud Private. Therefore, it helps organizations focus on infrastructure deployment and makes it more efficient.
2
Security and compliance controls
Its security and compliance controls may be more comprehensive than other tools like AWS and IBM Cloud Private, which is important for enterprises that handle sensitive data.
3
Multi-cloud support
The multi-cloud support is also a unique feature. Other cloud management tools work exclusively for specific providers, while GC Landing Zone can easily manage infrastructure across different platforms.
4
Resource tagging
Compared to other tools, GC Landing Zone offers simplified resource management. That means you can manage and organize resources and use tags to filter, search, and group resources based on specific criteria.
What are the benefits of Google Cloud Landing Zone?
Improved security
Robust implementation of the Google Cloud Landing Zone helps make your cloud infrastructure long-lasting and secure. It helps improve security by implementing firewalls, security groups, and access controls that only permit authorized individuals to access private data.
Increased efficiency and productivity
The Resource Hierarchy element in the Landing zone assists administrators in controlling policies and managing access to higher-level resources. It helps to streamline the resources and only deploy the applications to the relevant people.
Better compliance
Google Cloud Network offers network isolation through virtual private clouds and private IP addresses. This helps administrators control the network traffic and reduce the risk of security breaches for better compliance with cloud operations.
Cost optimization
Resource hierarchy also helps with cost optimization and ensures that all resources connect with the right billing account. This helps track costs and manage them effectively.
Backup and disaster recovery
Google Cloud Landing Zone helps you set up a backup and DR so your organization can quickly recover from disasters and outages, ensure business continuity, and reduce downtime.
Real-world examples
Real-world examples include big enterprise companies like Vodafone that manage their cloud resources through the Google Cloud Landing Zone.
How to Set Up Google Cloud Landing Zone?
The first and foremost important aspect is clearly defining why your Landing Zone is being built. Without the proper intent, there’s no use in creating a landing zone. If you don’t visualize the business outcomes, the Landing Zone won’t help you till the end.
1
Preparing for Google Cloud Landing Zone
Focus on your desired business outcomes and plan a timeline to illustrate when to achieve what. It’s also important to define how the users, applications, and services will consume your landing zone.
2
Creating a landing zone
When you start writing the code for your Landing Zone, it’s important to review the modes of consumption continuously. That means ensuring that anything you do when creating the Landing Zone does not provoke inflexibility during project delivery.
3
Configuring policies
The main objective of a Landing Zone is to deliver whatever the business requirement is. The cloud is built using infrastructure-as-code. That gives you the space for how you design platforms and services.
4
Enforcing policies
The policies will depend on your business objectives. You have to ensure your team understands and creates robust security and compliance aware-culture, regularly review resource utilization, and keep the landing zone blueprint flexible.
5
Launching and managing resources
The resources you use should be created using API calls or tools. Testing the resources on the Landing Zone through build-destroy cycles is also important. Lastly, managing forgotten resources or incorrectly sized resources is also crucial.
Best practices and tips to optimize your Landing Zone
Limit your functions and services that deliver compliance and security measures to the Landing Zone service.
You can use Google’s own cloud security policies to guide you on security standards and serve as a reference point.
Make sure to automate the majority of the tasks and keep the tools that cannot be automated on the backlog as open issues.
Regularly check for abandoned resources to avoid additional costs and save up on useful storage.
Using native tools such as Cloud Asset Inventory or Cloud Security Command Center helps comply with security features.
Implementing a hierarchy structure helps ensure your resources are organized and managed effectively.
Implement a governance model that outlines how resources are created, managed, and decommissioned.
Use tools like Stackdriver to monitor and optimize your Landing Zone's performance.
Conclusion
The Cloud is a game-changing innovation with many benefits, but only when you do it right. Doing everything using API-driven services means you can make changes as you go and pivot.
Following the principles, benefits, and practices for using the Google Cloud Landing Zone helps you stay ahead of the game and minimize your chances of ending up in the cloud graveyard.
FAQ
What is the difference between Google Cloud Landing Zone and other cloud management tools?
If you’re comfortable using the Google Cloud Platform, the Google Cloud Landing Zone is the best option. It helps to implement the best practices, templates, and tools, to automate and set up resources on the cloud.
What are the benefits of using Google Cloud Landing Zone?
The primary benefits include:
Support for the whole software delivery process, making it easier to deliver fast and more reliable applications.
Helps reduce costs and manage them effectively.
Identity Aware Proxy and role-based access controls.
Improves security and compliance protocols through consistent implementation.
How do I set up Google Cloud Landing Zone?
You need to make sure you have the following key components and use them to set up your Google Cloud Landing Zone:
Landing Zone Core that includes bootstrap and the baseline. The bootstrap creates a Google Cloud Organization while the baseline is a set of instructions for delivering security and compliance protocols.
Define your business-specific requirements like the identity provider, ingress/egress integration, etc.
Define your application infrastructure like Kubernetes clusters, instance groups, or database services.
What kind of policies can I enforce with Google Cloud Landing Zone?
Networking policies like establishing firewall rules.
Identity and management policies including role-based access.
Management policies including setting budget limits.
Can I use Google Cloud Landing Zone with other cloud providers?
No. That is because the Google Cloud Landing Zone is specifically designed for GCP. However, you can implement the principles used in the Google Cloud Landing Zone to other cloud providers.
How does Google Cloud Landing Zone improve security and compliance?
Landing Zone implementation gives you the ability to create and manage projects with a measure of known, and enforceable security and compliance framework.
You can use the VPC service to control the perimeter for each environment that helps mitigate the risk of data exfiltration and improves your security and compliance.
How does Google Cloud Landing Zone help with cost optimization?
GCP provides valuable insights into how our resources work on the platform. This helps to oversee where you need to make changes when designing a landing zone and ensure that you don’t overspend on cloud resources kept on the GCP environment.
