The greenhouse
How a cloud environment we look after is arranged, drawn as a greenhouse. Select a zone on the drawing or use the buttons to read what lives there. Illustrative diagram.
Soil: accounts & foundations
Cloud accounts, billing, identity and permissions. Everything grows from here, so it is set up in your name, with access given only to people who need it.
Paths: networking
How traffic reaches your services and how they talk to each other. Private by default, public only where it must be, with certificates kept current.
Beds: compute
Servers, containers or serverless functions where your applications run. Sized for what you need now, with room to expand.
Water tank: data
Databases and file storage. Encrypted, access-controlled, and kept separate from the beds so a problem in one does not drain the other.
Vents: monitoring
Checks and alerts that tell us when the greenhouse is too hot, too cold or a window has blown open, ideally before anyone outside notices.
Shed: backups
Copies kept apart from the main greenhouse, and regularly taken out to check they still work.