Overview of AWS Resource Explorer

AWS Resource Explorer is a managed service helps to explore resources across the regions around the globe. It assists to retrieve resources like Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Kinesis streams, DynamoDB tables. Users can search for resources using resource metadata like resource names, tags and IDs across the regions.

Features of AWS Resource Explorer

a) Resources can be searched in the primary region or across regions in the AWS account.

b) Users can search for resources by using keywords, IDs, attribute tags to filter the search results to matching resources.

c) Admins can create specific views defining which resources are available in search result.

d) Resource Explorer is eventually consistent which allows achieving high availability by replicating data across multiple servers within AWS data centers around the globe.

Getting started with Resource Explorer

• In order to work with Resource explorer, first it has to be enabled on individual AWS account level through management console.

AWS Resource Explorer

• To turn on Resource explorer on AWS account level, the indexes are required to be created in all AWS regions on the account level or possibly in selected AWS regions.
• Index region is to be selected (for e.g. East US — us-east1 (N.Virginia)).
• Enablement of view which represents a set of filters which can be used to access resource information in an AWS resource explorer index.
• A default view with filters to aggregate metadata including all resources can be provisioned in the aggregator AWS region.
• Granting to service account permission is required to use the data sources in order access data from multiple resources of the AWS account while enabling the resource explorer.
• There’s no additional cost incurred while resource explorer is enabled on account level.

Resource Explorer parameters

• While resource explorer is enabled on AWS account, it’ll create local index in the selected primary region along with aggregated index containing copy of replicated aggregated resource metadata tags across other regions.

Resource explorer aggregated index metadata replication

• Next, the resources can be searched by resource search option providing consolidated view of all resources across regions from the particular AWS account.

resource search through resource explorer

• For individual resource level searched in resource explorer, the resources shared across other accounts are also visible.