AWS launches enhanced AWS Resource Explorer features for new resource insights

Today, we are excited to announce a significant enhancement to AWS Resource Explorer that delivers a unified view of centralized resource insights and properties from AWS services.

With the enhanced Resource Explorer experience, relevant data and insights from multiple AWS services is centralized for supported resource types. Customers use keyword-based search to return a list of resources and now customers can select on a resource to see a resource’s data and insights, without changing context providing a single console experience.

Customers can use these new features to take actions on resources directly from the Resource Explorer console, such as manage tags, add resources to applications, and get additional information about a resource with Amazon Q, for better security posture, more accurate cost allocation reporting, and better resource governance.

Resource explorer is now integrated with Amazon Q Developer, the most capable generative AI–powered assistant for software development. You can ask questions about your resources to Amazon Q Developer using natural language by leveraging the ARN of the resource as a starting point.

In this blog, we will walk through the new experience with Resource Explorer.

Walkthrough

Inspect centralized resource insight and properties

You can now inspect resource properties, resource-level cost with AWS Cost Explorer, AWS Security Hub findings, AWS Config compliance and configuration history, event timelines with AWS CloudTrail, and a relationship graph showing connected resources.

With this release, you now have a single console experience to use simple keyword-based searches for your AWS resources, view relevant resource properties, and confidently take action to organize your resources. When searching in Resource Explorer, you can simply click on a resource result to view additional resource details without losing the context of their search. For example, in image 1 below, you can see the EC2 resource summary in the ‘Overview’ tab that includes cost details, config compliance and security findings.

[Figure 1 – AWS Resource Explorer homepage]

Next, navigate to the ‘Config compliance’ tab to view the resource compliance status with rules from AWS Config. The Compliance tab requires that you have AWS Config configured in your AWS account. If your account already has AWS Config enabled, but does not include any rules, you can choose Add rule to create new rules in the AWS Config console.

If the selected resource does include rules, this tab displays the resource’s Compliant and Non-compliant rules, including any known fixes for non-compliant rules. Choosing an individual rule directs you to the rule in the AWS Config console.

[Figure 2 – Config compliance tab]

Next, navigate to the ‘Timeline’ tab to view the resource history of events over the past 60 days. You can filter by configuration events, compliance events, or CloudTrail Events.

[Figure 3 – resource timeline tab]

Visualize the relationship graph showing connected resources

Navigate to the ‘Relationships’ tab to visualize a relationship graph showing connected resources. This feature provides contextual insight so that you can better troubleshoot issues or investigate blast radius. You can save this relationship graph as an image as well.

[Figure 4 – resource relationships tab]

Leverage new search query templates to search for resources

The Resource Explorer console provides new search query templates, which are predefined query configurations for common queries. Query templates allow you to quickly perform a search and better understand how to customize your own queries.

Let us look at how to use the Resource Explorer console to search for untagged S3 buckets in your AWS account.

Start by selecting the ‘All untagged resources of [type]’ query template.

[Figure 5 – Resource Explorer sample query]

This pops up an option to choose a resource type. Select ‘s3:bucket’ from the filter and choose on ‘Apply’ button.

[Figure 6 – add resource]

The list of untagged S3 buckets is displayed in the Resource Explorer console.

[Figure 7 – Query results]

You can explore other new query templates to search resources in your account and quickly act on it. Using the search query templates is a convenient way to quickly search for resources that needs to be tagged for better organization and ensuring compliance with tagging policies. Overall, the Resource Explorer console and its query templates provides a user-friendly way to search and filter AWS resources based on different attributes. This can streamline cloud management tasks and improve visibility into your AWS infrastructure.

Take action on resources directly from the Resource Explorer console

AWS Resource Explorer provides a centralized view of all AWS resources across services and Regions, allowing you to filter and select specific resources based on various criteria. You can select a particular resource within the same AWS account to view advanced resource details, including full resource metadata, relationships with other resources, and can take actions such as manage tags, add to application, and more.

Let us look at how you can add tags to one of the S3 buckets with missing tags.

Navigate to the Actions menu and select Manage tags option to add the missing tags to your S3 buckets. You can also modify existing tags that may have a variable spelling/capitalizations and fixing them.

[Figure 8 – adding missing tags]

Review the desired tag keys and values that you selected and apply the tag changes on the resource from within the Resource Explorer console.

[Figure 9 – apply tags]

This capability to apply tags directly within the Resource Explorer console, along with other resource management quick actions, helps enforce better security posture, more accurate cost allocation reporting, and better resource governance.

Fetch additional information about a resource using Amazon Q Developer

You can also use Amazon Q Developer to ask what you want to find using natural language. You can select a specific AWS resource and use the Actions menu to ask Amazon Q about the resource. You can also simply type – ‘Provide more information about a specific EC2 resource’

[Figure 10 – Amazon Q resource insights]

Amazon Q quickly comes back with an answer providing metadata about the EC2 instance. It also lists down related resources like EBS volumes, IAM roles along with links to them.

[Figure 11 – related resources]

Conclusion

AWS Resource Explorer helps customers optimize their workloads to resolve issues across resources and applications for their entire organization through its resource search and discovery capabilities. These new feature enhancements are making it easier than ever for customers to find and manage their resources at scale.

To turn on AWS Resource Explorer, see the AWS Resource Explorer console. Read about getting started in our AWS Resource Explorer documentation, or explore the AWS Resource Explorer product page.

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