Updated
Updated · InfoWorld · Sep 22
Architect Details 7 Azure Landing Zone Decisions for 2-Region Enterprise Design
Updated
Updated · InfoWorld · Sep 22

Architect Details 7 Azure Landing Zone Decisions for 2-Region Enterprise Design

2 articles · Updated · InfoWorld · Sep 22

Summary

  • Seven design choices shaped an enterprise Azure landing zone aimed at making secure, governed environments usable for engineering teams rather than just compliant on paper.
  • Two Azure regions ran in active-active mode behind Azure Front Door, while Azure Virtual WAN replaced a self-managed hub-and-spoke setup to provide cross-region connectivity and centralized routing.
  • Palo Alto Cloud NGFW was built into routing from the start, and governance used management groups, subscriptions and risk-based guardrails instead of blanket deny policies that slow developers.
  • Datadog handled observability, a dedicated cloud SIEM handled security analytics, and GitHub larger runners connected through Azure VNets so CI/CD could reach private resources without reopening public access.
  • The broader lesson was that a landing zone is an operating model—networking, security, telemetry, deployment and resiliency must work together as a repeatable platform beyond Microsoft’s reference architecture.

Insights

Why did one cloud architect abandon traditional network designs to build a self-governing Azure landing zone?
Could treating your cloud landing zone as a simple network layout be the exact reason your teams bypass security?
How does connecting GitHub runners directly to Azure VNets secretly solve the biggest bottleneck in enterprise cloud deployments?