Resource Explorer, a managed tool for searching and discovering resources inside an AWS account, was been made generally available, according to an announcement from AWS. The new feature can query several regions but not multiple accounts, and it is free to use.
Resources with Amazon Resource Names (ARNs), such as S3 buckets, EC2 instances, Amazon Kinesis streams, and DynamoDB tables, are supported by Resource Explorer. Chief evangelist for EMEA at AWS, Danilo Poccia, writes:
You may browse through the AWS resources in your account across Regions using the new AWS Resource Explorer by using metadata like names, tags, and IDs. You can rapidly jump from the search results to the relevant service console and Region to begin working on a resource once you locate it in the management console.
Administrators must enable the new service in order to generate and manage the indexes because it is disabled by default. Views can be developed for distinct user groups based on their responsibilities and permissions to specify which resource information is visible for search and discovery, hence controlling the visibility of the resources.
The query must be run against a view specified in the region with the aggregate index in order to search for resources across regions with a single search. Product marketing manager for Resmo Hatice zşahan produced a piece on “the benefits and drawbacks” of Resource Explorer. Zşahan’s top points:
Certain resource types are purposefully left out of Resource Explorer because incorporating them might expose user data that they might contain. These resource types, such as S3 objects found in a bucket, DynamoDB attribute values, and DynamoDB table elements, are simply not indexed by Resource Explorer.
Resource Explorer can be used with the CLI, the SDKs, or a console-wide search bar. Poccia clarifies:
The search bar at the top of the Management Console also allows me to browse across my AWS resources. As it returns results that encompass AWS services, features, blogs, documentation, tutorials, events, and more, we refer to this functionality as unified search. I start my search by adding /Resources to narrow it down to AWS resources.
Developers can access the resource’s service console and region directly from the search results shown in the console.
Long expected is the new resource inventory capability. Some customers contrast the new feature with the choices provided by other providers and raise concerns about the few services supported, the absence of multi-account support, and the eventually consistent model. Tweets by Ted Andersen:
The Get-AzureResource, /resources, and AZ resource list API functions have been available on Azure since its inception. AWS did it in just 20 years? And it becomes “ultimately consistent”?
The Duckbill Group’s cloud economist, Corey Quinn, continues:
It’s disappointing that there isn’t a multi-account or multi-org option. And before it displays the contents of the account, a spit-take 36-hour eventual consistency period is required?
For the new service, the cloud provider published an API reference manual. Resource Explorer does not support searching across several accounts inside an organisation and is only presently available in a small number of areas. There is no additional cost for the service.
