Setting up AWS Organizations
In AWS Organizations, organizational units (OUs) are containers for organizing accounts into groups. An OU can be used to group accounts based on any criteria, such as by department, application, or environment. OUs provide a way to apply policies and permissions to groups of accounts collectively, rather than individually.
OUs can be nested within other OUs, creating a hierarchical structure that allows for greater flexibility and control over the management of AWS resources. For example, you could create an OU for a specific department, and then create sub-OUs for different applications or environments within that department.
When policies are applied to an OU, they are automatically inherited by all accounts within that OU, and any sub-OUs within it. This can simplify the management of policies and permissions, as you can apply them to groups of accounts all at once.
AWS Organizations provides several benefits for managing multiple AWS accounts within an organization:
Centralized management: AWS Organizations allows you to centrally manage policies and permissions across multiple AWS accounts, making it easier to enforce security and compliance requirements.
Cost savings: By consolidating billing for multiple AWS accounts, AWS Organizations can help you optimize your costs and save money on your overall AWS bill.
Improved security: AWS Organizations enables you to implement consistent security controls across multiple AWS accounts, and provides granular control over permissions and access.
Streamlined resource management: With AWS Organizations, you can use features like AWS Resource Access Manager to share resources across multiple accounts, making it easier to manage resources like VPCs, subnets, and security groups.
Simplified billing and payments: By consolidating billing for multiple accounts, AWS Organizations makes it easier to manage billing and payments for your organization, and can help you avoid the hassle of managing multiple invoices and payments.
Here are some common use cases for AWS Organizations:
Consolidated billing: AWS Organizations enables you to consolidate billing for multiple AWS accounts, making it easier to manage costs and optimize spending.
Security and compliance: By applying policies and permissions across multiple accounts, AWS Organizations can help you enforce security and compliance requirements across your organization.
Resource sharing: AWS Organizations provides tools like AWS Resource Access Manager, which enables you to share resources like VPCs, subnets, and security groups across multiple accounts.
Centralized management: With AWS Organizations, you can manage multiple AWS accounts from a single location, making it easier to monitor and control resources across your organization.
Automation and orchestration: AWS Organizations APIs and the AWS CLI can be used to automate the process of managing multiple accounts, enabling you to scale your operations more easily.
Here are the general steps to create an AWS Organization:
1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console using an account that has the necessary permissions to create an organization.
2. Open the AWS Organizations console.
3. Choose “Create organization.”
4. Select “Consolidated billing” if you want to consolidate billing for all accounts in the organization. This will enable you to receive a single invoice for all accounts in the organization.
5. Choose “Create organization.”
6. You’ll be prompted to provide an email address and name for the master account. The master account will have full control over the organization, and will be used to manage all other accounts in the organization.
7. Review the AWS Organizations Terms and Conditions, and then select “Accept AWS Organizations Terms and Create Organization.”
8. Once the organization is created, you can begin adding accounts to it. You can do this manually by inviting accounts to join the organization, or you can use AWS Organizations APIs or the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) to automate the process.
Overall, creating an AWS Organization is a straightforward process, and can help you centralize management, simplify billing and payments, and improve security and compliance across your AWS accounts.
