It is organized in folders representing environments (e.g., "dev", "prod"), each implemented by a stand-alone terraform [process factory](../../../../blueprints/factories/README.md).
A single factory creates projects in a well-defined context, according to your resource management structure. For example, in the diagram above, each Team is structured to have specific folders projects for a given environment, such as Production and Development, per the resource management structure configured in stage `01-resman`.
Projects for each environment across different teams are created by dedicated service accounts, as exemplified in the diagram above. While there's no intrinsic limitation regarding where the project factory can create a projects, the IAM bindings for the service account effectively enforce boundaries (e.g., the production service account shouldn't be able to create or have any access to the development projects, and vice versa).
The project factory stage lightly wraps the underlying [project-factory module](../../../../modules/project-factory/), including Shared VPC service project attachment, VPC SC perimeter membership, etc.
This stage is meant to be executed after "foundational stages" (i.e., stages [`00-bootstrap`](../../0-bootstrap), [`01-resman`](../../1-resman), 02-networking (either [VPN](../../2-networking-b-vpn), [NVA](../../2-networking-c-nva), [NVA with BGP support](../../2-networking-e-nva-bgp)) and [`02-security`](../../2-security)) have been run.
It's of course possible to run this stage in isolation, by making sure the architectural prerequisites are satisfied (e.g., networking), and that the Service Account running the stage is granted the appropriate roles.
As all other FAST stages, the [mechanism used to pass variable values and pre-built provider files from one stage to the next](../../0-bootstrap/README.md#output-files-and-cross-stage-variables) is also leveraged here.
The commands to link or copy the provider and terraform variable files can be easily derived from the `stage-links.sh` script in the FAST root folder, passing it a single argument with the local output files folder (if configured) or the GCS output bucket in the automation project (derived from stage 0 outputs). The following examples demonstrate both cases, and the resulting commands that then need to be copy/pasted and run.
If you're not using FAST, refer to the [Variables](#variables) table at the bottom of this document for a full list of variables, their origin (e.g., a stage or specific to this one), and descriptions explaining their meaning.
Besides the values above, the project factory is driven by YAML data files, with one file per project. Please refer to the underlying [project factory module](../../../../modules/project-factory/) documentation for details on the format.
| [billing_account](variables.tf#L19) | Billing account id. If billing account is not part of the same org set `is_org_level` to false. | <codetitle="object({ id = string is_org_level = optional(bool, true) })">object({…})</code> | ✓ | | <code>0-bootstrap</code> |
| [prefix](variables.tf#L39) | Prefix used for resources that need unique names. Use 9 characters or less. | <code>string</code> | ✓ | | <code>0-bootstrap</code> |
| [factory_data_path](variables.tf#L32) | Path to folder containing YAML project data files. | <code>string</code> | | <code>"data/projects"</code> | |
