Cross-account and cross-Region pipelines

Exam alignment: DOP-C02 Domain 1 task statements for pipelines, testing, artifacts, or deployment.

Learning objective

Design roles, regional artifact stores, encryption, and wave promotion.

Difficulty / Schwierigkeitsgrad	Advanced
Study time / Lernzeit	120 minutes
Prerequisites / Voraussetzungen	Previous lessons in this volume

Professional scenario

One build must deploy unchanged to two accounts and two Regions.

Core concepts

• Cross-account deployment uses target roles and STS.
• Cross-Region actions need an artifact store in that Region.
• KMS and bucket policies are part of the authorization path.
• Promote one digest in controlled waves.

Architecture flow

1. Identify the release input and immutable identity.
2. Select the managed AWS control plane and least-privilege role.
3. Execute build, test, artifact, or deployment work.
4. Collect service events, logs, reports, and runtime metrics.
5. Stop, retry, or roll back according to explicit rules.

Decision matrix

Requirement	Preferred choice	Reason
Cross-account access	AssumeRole	Temporary credentials
Cross-Region action	Regional artifact store	Local action input
Global risk reduction	Sequential waves	Limit blast radius

Failure modes and troubleshooting

• Regional artifact store is missing.
• KMS policy denies target role.
• Both Regions deploy despite wave requirement.

Security and operations

• Use short-lived service roles and least privilege.
• Encrypt artifacts and protect logs from secret exposure.
• Record changes and approvals for audit.

Hands-on lab

Goal / Ziel: Design a two-account, two-Region release manifest.

Tasks

1. Create the smallest safe test architecture.
2. Implement or simulate the main workflow.
3. Introduce one controlled failure.
4. Diagnose it from service evidence.
5. Document cleanup and one improvement.

Validation

• The workflow uses an immutable version.
• A required failure blocks promotion.
• The diagnosis identifies the first failed transition.

Cost control / Kostenkontrolle: Keep resources short lived; read cleanup before starting.

Cleanup

1. Delete pipeline/build/deployment resources.
2. Delete temporary artifacts, images, logs, and roles.

Exam traps

• Rebuilding per Region.
• Configuring IAM but forgetting KMS.

Key takeaways

• Cross-account deployment uses target roles and STS.
• Promote one digest in controlled waves.
• Decisions must be justified by requirements and failure behavior.

Review questions

1. What is the immutable release identity?
2. Which evidence proves failure or success?
3. What is the safest recovery action?

Answers

1. A version, digest, or uniquely versioned artifact.
2. Service events, logs, reports, health checks, and runtime metrics.
3. Restore the known-good version using the configured rollback path.