Building Azure Right: A Practical Checklist for Infrastructure Landing Zones

When the Gaps Start Showing

A few months ago, we walked into a high-priority Azure environment review for a customer dealing with inconsistent deployments and rising costs. After a few discovery sessions, the root cause became clear: while they had resources running, there was no consistent foundation behind them.

No standard tagging. No security baseline. No network segmentation strategy. In short—no structured Landing Zone.

That situation isn't uncommon. Many organizations sprint into Azure workloads without first planning the right groundwork. That’s why having a clear, structured implementation checklist for your Landing Zone is so essential.

What This Checklist Will Help You Do

This implementation checklist isn’t just a formality. It’s meant to help teams:

• Align cloud implementation with business goals
• Avoid compliance and security oversights
• Improve visibility, governance, and operational readiness
• Build a scalable and secure foundation for workloads

Let’s break it down, step by step.

🎯 Define Business Priorities Before Touching the Portal

Before provisioning anything, work with stakeholders to understand:

• What outcomes matter most – Scalability? Faster go-to-market? Cost optimization?
• What constraints exist – Regulatory standards, data sovereignty, security controls
• What must not break – Legacy integrations, authentication flows, SLAs

This helps prioritize cloud decisions based on value rather than assumption.

🔍 Get a Clear Picture of the Current Environment

Your approach will differ depending on whether it’s a:

• Greenfield setup (fresh, no legacy baggage)
• Brownfield deployment (existing workloads to assess and uplift)

For brownfield, audit gaps in areas like scalability, identity, and compliance before any new provisioning.

📜 Lock Down Governance Early

Set standards from day one:

• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Granular, least-privilege access
• Resource Tagging: Consistent metadata for tracking, automation, and cost management
• Security Baselines: Predefined policies aligned with your compliance model (NIST, CIS, etc.)

This ensures everything downstream is both discoverable and manageable.

🧭 Design a Network That Supports Security and Scale

Network configuration should not be an afterthought:

• Define NSG Rules and enforce segmentation
• Use Routing Rules to control flow between tiers
• Consider Private Endpoints to keep services off the public internet

This stage sets your network up to scale securely and avoid rework later.

🧰 Choose a Deployment Approach That Fits Your Team

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Choose from:

• Predefined ARM/Bicep templates
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using tools like Terraform
• Custom Provisioning for unique enterprise requirements

Standardizing this step makes every future deployment faster, safer, and reviewable.

🔐 Set Up Identity and Access Controls the Right Way

No shared accounts. No “Owner” access to everyone.

Use:

• Azure Active Directory (AAD) for identity management
• RBAC to ensure users only have access to what they need, where they need it

This is a critical security layer—set it up with intent.

📈 Bake in Monitoring and Diagnostics from Day One

Cloud environments must be observable. Implement:

• Log Analytics Workspace (LAW) to centralize logs
• Diagnostic Settings to capture platform-level signals
• Application Insights to monitor app health and performance

These tools reduce time to resolution and help enforce SLAs.

🛡️ Review and Close on Security Posture

Before allowing workloads to go live, conduct a security baseline check:

• Enable data encryption at rest and in transit
• Review and apply Azure Security Center recommendations
• Ensure ACC (Azure Confidential Computing) compliance if applicable

Security is not a phase. It’s baked in throughout—but reviewed intentionally before go-live.

🚦 Validate Before You Launch

Never skip a readiness review:

• Deploy in a test environment to validate templates and policies
• Get sign-off from architecture, security, and compliance stakeholders
• Track checklist completion before promoting anything to production

This keeps surprises out of your production pipeline.

In Closing: It’s Not Just a Checklist, It’s Your Blueprint

When implemented well, this checklist becomes much more than a to-do list. It’s a blueprint for scalable, secure, and standardized cloud adoption. It helps teams stay on the same page, reduces firefighting, and accelerates real business value from Azure.

Whether you're managing a new enterprise rollout or stabilizing an existing environment, this checklist keeps your foundation strong.

Tags -
Infrastructure Landing Zone
Governance and Security Best Practices for Azure Infrastructure Landing Zones
Automating Azure Landing Zone Setup with IaC Templates
Checklist to Validate Azure Readiness Before Production Rollout
Monitoring, Access Control, and Network Planning in Azure Landing Zones
Azure Readiness Checklist for Production