Drift & Compliance
Drift happens when someone changes cloud resources outside of Archie — via the console, CLI, or another tool. Archie detects these changes and helps you fix them.
What is Drift?
When Archie deploys a VPC with a specific CIDR block, that's the desired state. If someone manually changes the CIDR in the AWS console, the actual state no longer matches. That's drift.
Drift Detection
Archie checks for drift automatically on a configurable schedule. You can also trigger manual checks.
Platform Health Dashboard
The main dashboard shows:
- X drifting — number of stacks with detected drift
- Drift Alerts — critical drifts with resource counts
- Example: "legacy-api-prod CRITICAL 4 resources"
Drift Detail
Click a drifted stack to see:
- Which resources drifted
- What changed (expected vs actual values)
- When the drift was detected
Remediation
Two options for handling drift:
- Remediate — reset the resource to match the blueprint (one click)
- Acknowledge — accept the drift and update the desired state
Compliance
Archie runs compliance checks at deploy time (see Deploying). Cloud-specific rules include:
Azure: No Public Blob Access, Encryption at Rest, HTTPS Only, WAF Required, No Unrestricted Inbound, NSG Explicit Deny-All
AWS: Tag requirements, IAM least privilege, encryption standards
Configuring Scans
In Settings → Drift & Orphan Scans, configure:
- Scan frequency (hourly, daily, weekly)
- Which stacks to include
- Notification preferences
What's Next
- Advanced Features — orphan detection, cost tracking
- Settings & Admin — configure scan policies