Multi-account governance models in AWS provide a structured approach to managing complex organizational environments by distributing workloads, security boundaries, and administrative responsibilities across multiple AWS accounts. This strategy is fundamental for enterprise-scale deployments and ad…Multi-account governance models in AWS provide a structured approach to managing complex organizational environments by distributing workloads, security boundaries, and administrative responsibilities across multiple AWS accounts. This strategy is fundamental for enterprise-scale deployments and addresses key concerns around security, compliance, billing, and operational efficiency.
AWS Organizations serves as the cornerstone service for implementing multi-account governance. It enables centralized management of multiple accounts through a hierarchical structure using Organizational Units (OUs). This hierarchy allows administrators to apply Service Control Policies (SCPs) that define permission guardrails across accounts, ensuring consistent security and compliance standards.
Common governance models include:
1. **Workload-based separation**: Isolating production, development, and testing environments in separate accounts to prevent unintended resource modifications and maintain clear boundaries.
2. **Business unit structure**: Allocating accounts per department or team, enabling cost tracking, resource isolation, and delegated administration while maintaining central oversight.
3. **Security-focused model**: Dedicating accounts for logging, security tools, and audit functions. A centralized security account aggregates CloudTrail logs, Config rules, and GuardDuty findings from all member accounts.
4. **Sandbox accounts**: Providing isolated environments for experimentation with strict budget controls and limited connectivity to production resources.
AWS Control Tower automates the setup of a well-architected multi-account environment, implementing best practices through guardrails and providing a dashboard for ongoing governance. It establishes landing zones with pre-configured accounts for logging and auditing.
Key governance capabilities include consolidated billing for cost management, cross-account IAM roles for secure access, and AWS Resource Access Manager for sharing resources across accounts. Organizations can implement tag policies for consistent resource labeling and backup policies for data protection requirements.
Effective multi-account governance balances autonomy for individual teams with centralized control for security and compliance, enabling organizations to scale their AWS footprint while maintaining operational excellence.
Multi-Account Governance Models
Why Multi-Account Governance Models Are Important
In enterprise environments, managing multiple AWS accounts is essential for maintaining security boundaries, cost allocation, and operational isolation. Multi-account governance models provide the framework for organizations to scale their cloud infrastructure while maintaining control, compliance, and consistency across all accounts. For the AWS Solutions Architect Professional exam, understanding these models is critical as they form the foundation of organizational design questions.
What Are Multi-Account Governance Models?
Multi-account governance models are architectural patterns and AWS services used to manage, secure, and operate multiple AWS accounts as a cohesive unit. These models leverage key AWS services including:
AWS Organizations - The central service for managing multiple accounts, providing consolidated billing, Service Control Policies (SCPs), and organizational units (OUs).
AWS Control Tower - A managed service that automates the setup and governance of a secure, multi-account AWS environment based on best practices.
AWS Service Catalog - Enables centralized management of approved IT services and products across accounts.
AWS Config - Provides resource inventory, configuration history, and configuration change notifications across accounts.
How Multi-Account Governance Works
1. Organizational Structure: - Create a management account (formerly master account) that serves as the root of your organization - Organize accounts into Organizational Units (OUs) based on function, environment, or business unit - Common OU structures include: Security, Infrastructure, Workloads (Production/Development), and Sandbox
2. Policy Implementation: - Service Control Policies (SCPs) define permission guardrails that restrict what actions accounts can perform - SCPs are applied at the OU or account level and affect all IAM users and roles - SCPs do not grant permissions; they only restrict existing permissions
3. Centralized Security: - Use a dedicated Security OU with accounts for logging (CloudTrail, Config), security tools (GuardDuty, Security Hub), and audit - Implement cross-account IAM roles for administrative access - Centralize identity management using AWS IAM Identity Center (formerly AWS SSO)
4. Landing Zone Patterns: - AWS Control Tower Landing Zone provides automated guardrails, account provisioning, and dashboards - Custom landing zones can be built using CloudFormation StackSets or Terraform - Account Factory automates new account provisioning with standardized configurations
Centralized Network Model: A dedicated Network account manages VPCs, Transit Gateway, and connectivity to on-premises environments.
Distributed Model: Each account manages its own resources with centralized policy enforcement through SCPs.
Hybrid Model: Combines centralized shared services with distributed workload accounts.
Exam Tips: Answering Questions on Multi-Account Governance Models
1. Understand SCP Inheritance: SCPs are inherited down the organizational hierarchy. An SCP attached to an OU affects all child OUs and accounts. Remember that SCPs on the management account have no effect on the management account itself.
2. Know When to Use Control Tower vs. Organizations: Control Tower is ideal for new AWS environments or when you need automated guardrails and account provisioning. Organizations alone is suitable when you need more customization or have existing multi-account setups.
3. Identify Security Account Patterns: When questions mention centralized logging, audit requirements, or security monitoring, look for answers involving dedicated security or log archive accounts with cross-account access.
4. Recognize Cost Optimization Scenarios: Consolidated billing through Organizations enables volume discounts and Reserved Instance sharing across accounts. Look for this in cost-related questions.
5. Watch for Compliance Keywords: Terms like guardrails, preventive controls, and detective controls often point to Control Tower or SCPs as the correct answer.
6. Cross-Account Access Patterns: Questions about accessing resources across accounts typically involve IAM roles with trust policies, not IAM users. Look for AssumeRole patterns.
7. Account Isolation Principles: When questions emphasize blast radius reduction, workload isolation, or security boundaries, multi-account solutions are preferred over single-account with resource-level separation.
8. Automation and Standardization: For questions about consistent account provisioning, look for Account Factory, Service Catalog, or CloudFormation StackSets as solutions.
9. Network Connectivity: Transit Gateway is the scalable solution for connecting multiple VPCs across accounts, while VPC Peering is appropriate for simpler, fewer connections.
10. Remember the Management Account: The management account should have minimal workloads and is used primarily for organizational management and consolidated billing. Security-sensitive operations should be delegated to member accounts.