What is Gazelle?

Gazelle is the name of my Azure development tenant where I build landing zones. Instead of a one-size-fits-all model, I’m focused on crafting a tailored solution aligned with specific goals. In this case, it’s a production-like environment designed to explore the nuances of Azure management as code. The platform is shaped by these principles:

Cost Efficiency

Pay for what you use. If a platform is handling thousands of operations, it should reflect in the cost. But when it’s sitting idle, it should cost nothing. This principle drives the platform’s choice of Azure services with a pay-as-you-go model, where you’re billed only for the exact resources you consume. Fixed-price services, like Virtual WAN, are excluded to ensure the cost is tied to real-time usage.

Self Service

Engineers should be able to spin up and tear down their own landing zones without any bottlenecks. This is achieved by minimizing platform-wise shared services and enabling a smooth self-service experience. Landing zone engineers have full autonomy to create and manage their environments, including adjusting budgets, excluding resources from security baselines, and many more.

Embrace Change

Change should always be easy to apply, and a quick tweak should never turn into a project. Gazelle embraces change through its modular design, breaking down the platform into small, task-focused components that can be easily modified. These modules are grouped by functionality and deployed together, ensuring that changes in one area don’t unintentionally impact others. Additionally, a dedicated test environment mirrors production, enabling safe experimentation and validating that changes behave as expected before rollout.