Tools, templates and assessments for the Ready phase of CAF (Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework)

 Microsoft is offering an excellent framework to support cloud migration and adoption process – Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) 

The framework defined an iterative process with the following phases:

1. Define Strategy
2. Plan
3. Ready
4. Adopt
5. Govern
6. Manage

For each of them, Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) provides us a list of templates, tools, and assessment mechanisms that can help us to improve the adoption and migration process. Let's take a look at the ones for Ready. 

Azure Setup Guide

Location: https://ms.portal.azure.com/#blade/Microsoft_Azure_Resources/QuickstartPlaybookBlade/guideId/intro-azure-setup 

The first thing you need to do when you start a project is to configure the environments. Ensuring that you have the right governance, security, monitoring in place. 

The guide is providing best practice, with direct links to Azure Portal from where you can configure the recommendations. There are 5 different areas that are covered:

1. Organize resources
2. Manage access
3. Manage costs and billing
4. Plan governance, security and compliance
5. Establish monitoring and reporting

Plus a section that provides different resources from where you can find the current status of your services, any updates related to Azure that are available and news related to Azure services and features. 

Naming and Tagging Conventions Tracking Template

Location: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/CloudAdoptionFramework/master/ready/naming-and-tagging-conventions-tracking-template.xlsx 

The main purpose of this document is to help us to define the conventions that we shall follow at the moment in time when we define tags or create new instances of Azure services. You have the freedom to change the conversions, but keep in mind to take into account all the dimensions that are covered inside the template. In this way to will be able to manage more easily your cloud resources. 

Azure Landing Zone

Location: https://docs.microsoft.com/ro-ro/azure/cloud-adoption-framework/ready/landing-zone/

Complex cloud solutions require more than one Azure Subscription. Concerns like security, networking, scaling are forcing organizations to use multiple subscriptions. Managing them requires extra effort. For this situation, Azure Landing Zone is offering us design areas that cover topics like Identity, Networking topology, Connectivity, Resource organization, enrollment, governance, BCDR, deployment and operation. 

For each design area, we have a list of principles that we need to follow and deployment instructions that can build our initial blueprint (e.g. CAF migrate landing zone).

Ready checklist

Location: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Microsoft/CloudAdoptionFramework/master/ready/readiness-checklist.docx

A simple list of items that we shall follow at the moment in time where we are preparing to adopt the cloud. The covered areas are Readiness Guide, Landing zone, Blueprint, and Best practices. Very useful if it your first cloud adoption project or program.

CAF Foundation blueprint

Location: https://github.com/Microsoft/CloudAdoptionFramework/tree/master/ready/migration-landing-zone-governance

Often we forget to define and implement cloud governance. Azure is offering us a lightweight implementation of the core governance principles that we shall have inside our project. Items like:

1. Azure Policy,
2. Azure Resource Groups for Apps, Identity, Shared resources and network
3. Azure Templates

, are created by the framework. Easy to extend, we can use this framework as a starting point for our Azure Governance layout. 

CAF Migration landing zone blueprint

Location: https://github.com/Microsoft/CloudAdoptionFramework/tree/master/ready/migration-landing-zone

The reality is that most of the time, migrations are similar between each others and there are a set of core principles that are applicable in most of the cases. The landing zone defines a blueprint that can be used with success to define the landing zone for our workloads that we plan to migrate to Azure. 

Terraform modules

Location: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-adoption-framework/ready/landing-zone/terraform-landing-zone

We don't build environments and landing zone using the only ARM. Terraform is one of the 3rd parties that it is used to build and manage environemtns. To support teams that already know and use Terraform, especially for multi-cloud scenarios, Microsoft is offering guidance and out of the box modules for Terraform, that can be used to create our landing zone. 

Terraform registry

Location: https://registry.terraform.io/search/providers?q=aztfmod

The modules from the previous item are available inside the Terraform Registry website. In this way, we have one central location from where we can fetch Terraform modules provided by Microsoft.