Introduction

This Recommended Standards and Practices document outlines the considerations faced by service owners in the Division of IT (DoIT) who design, implement, and maintain computing workloads that deliver enterprise functionality. It is intended to provide guidance regarding the technical architecture, implementation, or delivery of a cloud service at Virginia Tech (VT). Its focus is on implementation best practices for public cloud solutions for enterprise workloads that are engineered using in-house expertise, not sourced from a vendor as a turnkey solution.

This document is not directly prescriptive. It does not carry the weight of university policy, nor does it define a standard operating procedure to which adherence is mandated. In the final analysis, it is anticipated that senior leaders within the division will ultimately be the decision makers that exercise their discretion to operationalize the abstract ideas in this document into organizational realities.