Tutorial / Cram Notes
AWS account structures are essential for managing resources, isolating environments, and controlling costs. They often follow the best practice of setting up a multi-account environment using the AWS Organizations service for better governance.
Multi-Account Strategy
A multi-account AWS strategy involves creating separate AWS accounts for different purposes or teams. This allows for:
- Isolation: Critical environments like production, development, and staging can be isolated from each other to avoid accidental access or disruptions.
- Security: Limits the ‘blast radius’ in case of a security breach.
- Cost Tracking: Streamlines the cost management and allocation process.
Organization Units (OUs)
Within AWS Organizations, groups of accounts can be organized into Organization Units. This hierarchy allows management policies to be applied at different levels, aiding in compliance, and governance.
Best Practices
Centralized Billing
One master account is used for payments, making it easier to track charges and use consolidated billing features.
Service Control Policies (SCPs)
SCPs are applied to OUs to ensure accounts within them follow certain restrictions for service usage.
Identity and Access Management
AWS recommends using AWS Single Sign-On (SSO) or AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles with cross-account access rather than sharing credentials.
Lifecycle Management
Regularly monitor and review accounts using AWS Config, AWS CloudTrail, and AWS Trusted Advisor to manage the lifecycle of resources effectively.
Related AWS Services
Several AWS services support the management of account structures and the implementation of best practices.
AWS Organizations
Enables you to consolidate multiple AWS accounts into an organization for centralized management.
AWS IAM and AWS SSO
AWS IAM governs user access and permissions within a single AWS account, while AWS SSO allows for central management of user access across multiple AWS accounts and applications.
AWS Control Tower
Sets up a well-architected multi-account environment using blueprints and policies that follow AWS best practices.
AWS Budgets and AWS Cost Explorer
Allow for cost tracking and budgeting across multiple accounts and services.
AWS Config and AWS CloudTrail
Monitor configuration changes and audit API calls across your AWS infrastructure.
Example
Let us consider an example organization with the following AWS account structure:
- Master Account: Controls payment and access to other accounts.
- Log Archive Account: Stores all audit logs from AWS CloudTrail and AWS Config.
- Security Tooling Account: Holds centralized security monitoring tools like Amazon GuardDuty and AWS Security Hub.
- Production Account: Runs the production workloads.
- Development Account: Used by developers for building and testing purposes.
- Staging Account: Used for pre-production testing.
| Account Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Master Account | Central account for billing and access control. |
| Log Archive Account | Stores logs for compliance and audit. |
| Security Account | Centralized security monitoring and response. |
| Production Account | Hosts live customer-facing applications. |
| Development Account | Used for application development and experimentation. |
| Staging Account | Environment for final testing before production deployment. |
Here, deploying AWS Control Tower with OUs and SCPs would maintain security and governance across all accounts. AWS Config rules would automatically check the configurations of the AWS resources, AWS IAM roles would be defined to restrict access, and AWS CloudTrail would monitor and log all the actions taken by a user, role, or AWS service.
Proper use of these services and account structures helps ensure the architecture designed for AWS is secure, efficient, and cost-effective, all of which are integral when preparing for the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional (DOP-C02) exam.
Practice Test with Explanation
True or False: It’s recommended to use a multi-account AWS strategy to separate different environments (production, development, testing).
- 1) True
- 2) False
Answer: True
Explanation: Using separate AWS accounts for different environments is a best practice as it helps in isolating resources, permissions, and billing.
Which AWS service is primarily used for centralized logging?
- 1) AWS CloudTrail
- 2) Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)
- 3) AWS Config
- 4) Amazon CloudWatch Logs
Answer: Amazon CloudWatch Logs
Explanation: Amazon CloudWatch Logs allows you to centralize logs from all of your systems, applications, and AWS services.
True or False: AWS Organizations allows you to set up and govern a multi-account AWS environment.
- 1) True
- 2) False
Answer: True
Explanation: AWS Organizations helps in creating and managing a multi-account AWS environment and enables policy-based management and governance.
IAM roles can be used to grant necessary permissions to AWS services or applications running on EC2 without storing credentials permanently on the instance.
- 1) True
- 2) False
Answer: True
Explanation: IAM roles provide a secure way to delegate permissions that applications can use when they need to interact with other AWS resources.
When using AWS KMS, what is the benefit of enabling automatic key rotation?
- 1) It reduces the cost of AWS KMS.
- 2) It immediately deletes old keys after rotation.
- 3) It enhances security by regularly changing the encryption key.
- 4) It increases the request rate limit for the key.
Answer: It enhances security by regularly changing the encryption key.
Explanation: Enabling automatic key rotation in AWS KMS helps improve security by changing the key on a regular basis and maintaining the older keys to decrypt any data encrypted with them.
Which AWS feature allows you to aggregate and monitor your AWS resource and billing data across multiple accounts and regions?
- 1) AWS Budgets
- 2) AWS Cost Explorer
- 3) AWS Trusted Advisor
- 4) AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR)
Answer: AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR)
Explanation: AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR) provides comprehensive data about your AWS costs and usage, and can be configured for multiple accounts and regions.
In terms of AWS account structure, what is the purpose of a “bastion account”?
- 1) To manage the networking components of your infrastructure
- 2) To serve as a centralized logging account
- 3) To secure and manage access to other AWS accounts
- 4) To isolate the production environment from development environments
Answer: To secure and manage access to other AWS accounts
Explanation: A bastion account acts as a secure primary entry point used by users to access other AWS accounts within an organization.
True or False: You should always use the root account for everyday tasks such as deploying services and managing resources.
- 1) True
- 2) False
Answer: False
Explanation: It’s a best practice to avoid using the root account for daily tasks. Users should operate with individual IAM users and roles with least privilege access.
Which AWS service is designed to help you analyze and manage your costs and usage over time?
- 1) AWS Cost Explorer
- 2) AWS Billing Dashboard
- 3) AWS Price List API
- 4) AWS Budgets
Answer: AWS Cost Explorer
Explanation: AWS Cost Explorer provides visual representation and insights to understand, analyze, and manage AWS costs and usage over time.
True or False: In AWS, Security Groups are stateful and Network Access Control Lists (NACLs) are stateless.
- 1) True
- 2) False
Answer: True
Explanation: Security Groups are stateful, meaning they automatically allow return traffic for initiated requests, and NACLs are stateless, each inbound and outbound traffic must be explicitly allowed.
Which of the following is NOT a feature of AWS Service Catalog?
- 1) Enforcing compliance with company policies
- 2) Automating the creation of AWS resources
- 3) Managing multiple versions of products
- 4) Automatic scaling of EC2 instances
Answer: Automatic scaling of EC2 instances
Explanation: AWS Service Catalog is used to organize, govern, and provision cloud resources, but does not automatically scale EC2 instances; that’s a feature of AWS Auto Scaling.
True or False: AWS Config allows you to audit and evaluate the configurations of your AWS resources for compliance with external compliance frameworks like HIPAA and GDPR.
- 1) True
- 2) False
Answer: False
Explanation: AWS Config lets you audit and evaluate configurations internally for compliance but doesn’t inherently ensure compliance with external frameworks like HIPAA or GDPR; it’s up to the user to interpret AWS Config data in the context of these frameworks.
Interview Questions
What is AWS Organizations and how does it benefit account management?
AWS Organizations is a service that allows you to manage and govern your environment as you scale your AWS resources. It enables you to consolidate multiple AWS accounts into an organization that you create and centrally manage. Benefits include simplified billing through consolidated billing, applying service control policies (SCPs) to enforce permissions policies across accounts, and automating AWS account creation and management.
Can you explain the concept of the multi-account AWS environment and its advantages for large organizations?
A multi-account AWS environment involves setting up multiple AWS accounts to separate resources and manage them independently for different applications, environments (dev, test, production), and business units. Advantages include improved security through isolation, better resource and cost allocation, simplification of compliance requirements, and minimization of the blast radius if a security event occurs.
What are some best practices for handling IAM users and permissions when managing multiple AWS accounts under AWS Organizations?
Best practices for handling IAM users and permissions include:
- Using AWS Single Sign-On (SSO) to manage access centrally
- Implementing least privilege access
- Utilizing service control policies (SCPs) at the organization level to set permission boundaries
- Regularly auditing permissions with IAM Access Advisor
- Using role-based access control (RBAC) with IAM roles for cross-account access instead of shared credentials.
Discuss how AWS Config can aid in maintaining compliance within a multi-account AWS setup?
AWS Config is a service that provides a detailed view of the configuration of AWS resources within your account. It can help in maintaining compliance by continuously monitoring and recording your AWS resource configurations and allowing you to automate the evaluation of recorded configurations against desired baselines. AWS Config can also be used to flag non-compliant resources and take action for remediation.
Describe how the use of AWS Control Tower can simplify the setup and governance of a secure and compliant multi-account environment.
AWS Control Tower automates the set-up of a baseline environment within AWS Organizations. It establishes a landing zone that is pre-configured with best practices for security and compliance. It creates a central dashboard to monitor the environment and implements preventive and detective guardrails to ensure compliance with policies. Control Tower simplifies ongoing management and governance throughout the account lifecycle.
What role does AWS Cost Explorer play in managing costs across multiple AWS accounts?
AWS Cost Explorer is a tool that allows you to visualize, understand, and manage your AWS costs and usage over time. When managing multiple AWS accounts, Cost Explorer can aggregate and break down costs and usage, identify trends, pinpoint cost drivers, and detect anomalies. It enables you to create custom reports to analyze data and implement cost-saving strategies.
Explain how the use of tagging can support cost allocation and governance across a multi-account AWS ecosystem.
Tagging provides a mechanism for attaching metadata to AWS resources, which can be used to allocate costs and support governance. By consistently applying tags that denote environment, application, or business unit, for example, you can more easily allocate costs for billing, implement policy-based automation, and improve visibility and control across multiple AWS accounts.
How would you use AWS Service Catalog to manage deployments across organizational units in a multi-account setup?
AWS Service Catalog allows you to create and manage catalogs of IT services that are approved for use on AWS. In a multi-account setup, it helps enforce consistency, compliance, and governance by allowing you to define portfolios of products (such as servers, databases, websites, or applications) that are centrally managed and tailored for different organizational units, ensuring that they can only provision pre-approved AWS services and configurations.
What are Service Control Policies and how do they work within AWS Organizations?
Service Control Policies (SCPs) are a type of policy that you can use in AWS Organizations to manage permissions in your organization’s accounts. SCPs allow you to define the maximum available permissions for account members of an organization. This can help to ensure that accounts adhere to compliance requirements and use AWS services within prescribed boundaries set by the central governance team.
How can you leverage AWS Trusted Advisor within an AWS Organizations setup to enhance the performance and security of your accounts?
AWS Trusted Advisor is a service that provides insights into your AWS environment, offering guidance to optimize resources for cost savings, performance improvements, and adherence to security best practices. In an AWS Organizations setup, you can use Trusted Advisor’s organization-wide view to monitor all accounts and aggregate recommendations, ensuring that best practices are consistently applied across your organization.
Can you integrate third-party monitoring and management tools with AWS multi-account structures?
Yes, third-party monitoring and management tools can typically integrate with AWS multi-account structures using AWS APIs, cross-account IAM roles, or by being deployed within each account with the necessary access permissions. Examples of such tools include Datadog, Splunk, and New Relic. Proper integration allows centralized monitoring and management of resources across all AWS accounts in the organization.
What steps would you take to perform a security assessment for your multi-account AWS infrastructure?
To perform a security assessment for a multi-account AWS infrastructure, one might:
- Use AWS Security Hub to get a comprehensive view of the security state of all accounts
- Implement automated security checks with AWS Config rules across accounts
- Run vulnerability scans using Amazon Inspector or third-party tools
- Enable AWS CloudTrail and AWS GuardDuty in all accounts for detecting threats and unusual activity
- Review IAM roles and policies regularly for any unnecessary permissions
- Conduct penetration testing in line with AWS policies and guidelines to identify potential vulnerabilities.
This blog post on AWS account structures is fantastic! It really helps to understand the best practices and services related to the DOP-C02 exam.
Can anyone explain the difference between AWS Organizations and Service Control Policies (SCPs)?
The explanations on IAM roles versus IAM users were superb, really clarified the differences for my DOP-C02 preparation.
How do AWS Landing Zone and Control Tower fit into the account structure best practices?
Thanks for the detailed breakdown. It made understanding AWS Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) settings a breeze.
The section on consolidating billing seemed a bit unclear. Can someone elaborate?
Appreciate the blog post! Helped me a lot in setting up my AWS study plan for the DOP-C02.
On the topic of best practices, how important is setting up CloudTrail for governance?