Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

Creating Resource Explorer resources with CloudFormation

Amazon Resource Explorer is integrated with Amazon CloudFormation, a service that helps you model and set up your Amazon resources. This integration helps you spend less time creating and managing your resources and infrastructure. You create a template that describes all the Amazon resources that you want, and CloudFormation provisions and configures those resources for you. Examples of resources include indexes, views, or the assignment of a default view for an Amazon Web Services Region.

When you use CloudFormation, you can reuse your template to set up your Resource Explorer resources consistently and repeatedly. Just describe your resources once, and then provision the same resources over and over in multiple Amazon Web Services accounts and Regions.

Using Amazon CloudFormation to deploy Resource Explorer to Amazon Organizations

You can use Amazon CloudFormation StackSets to deploy Resource Explorer to all of the accounts in your organization. When you add or create member accounts in your organization, StackSets can automatically configure indexes in each Amazon Web Services Region, including an aggregator index where you specify, to each new member account. For instructions, see Deploying Resource Explorer to the accounts in an organization.

Resource Explorer and CloudFormation templates

To provision and configure resources for Resource Explorer and related services, you must understand Amazon CloudFormation templates. Templates are formatted text files in JSON or YAML. These templates describe the resources that you want to provision in your CloudFormation stacks. If you're unfamiliar with JSON or YAML, you can use Amazon CloudFormation Designer to help you get started with CloudFormation templates. For more information, see What is Amazon CloudFormation Designer? in the Amazon CloudFormation User Guide.

Resource Explorer supports creating the following resource types in CloudFormation:

The following example illustrates how you might create one index and a view in the same Region, and set the view to be the default for the Region.

YAML

Description: >-
  Sample CFN Stack setting up Resource Explorer with an aggregator index and a default view 
Resources:
  SampleIndex:
    Type: 'AWS::ResourceExplorer2::Index'
    Properties:
      Type: AGGREGATOR
      Tags:
        Purpose: ResourceExplorer Sample CFN Stack
  SampleView:
    Type: 'AWS::ResourceExplorer2::View'
    Properties:
      ViewName: mySampleView
      IncludedProperties:
        - Name: tags
      Tags:
        Purpose: ResourceExplorer Sample CFN Stack
    DependsOn: SampleIndex
  SampleDefaultViewAssociation:
    Type: 'AWS::ResourceExplorer2::DefaultViewAssociation'
    Properties:
      ViewArn: !Ref SampleView

JSON

{
    "Description": "Sample CFN Stack setting up Resource Explorer with an aggregator index and a default view ",
    "Resources": {
        "SampleIndex": {
            "Type": "AWS::ResourceExplorer2::Index",
            "Properties": {
                "Type": "AGGREGATOR",
                "Tags": {
                    "Purpose": "ResourceExplorer Sample Stack"
                }
            }
        },
        "SampleView": {
            "Type": "AWS::ResourceExplorer2::View",
            "Properties": {
                "ViewName": "mySampleView",
                "IncludedProperties": [
                    {
                        "Name": "tags"
                    }
                ],
                "Tags": {
                    "Purpose": "ResourceExplorer Sample CFN Stack"
                }
            },
            "DependsOn": "SampleIndex"
        },
        "SampleDefaultViewAssociation": {
            "Type": "AWS::ResourceExplorer2::DefaultViewAssociation",
            "Properties": {
                "ViewArn": {
                    "Ref": "SampleView"
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

For more information, including examples of JSON and YAML templates for Resource Explorer indexes and views, see the ResourceExplorer2 resource type reference in the Amazon CloudFormation User Guide.

Troubleshooting CloudFormation setup

If you have existing Resource Explorer resources in your account, you may experience failures running CloudFormation templates to create Amazon Resource Explorer indexes and views. Only one index can be created for a given Region. If the CloudFormation templates attempt to create resources in the same Region(s), they will fail (expected behavior) if the templates do not account for the prior existence of these resources. Customers may notice this following the Immediate Resource Discovery launch. After this release, customers searching in the Unified Search bar or Resource Explorer console will trigger automatic index/view creation in the Region where they searched when they have appropriate permissions. Customers can do the following to work around this behavior:

Option A: Import existing resources into the Amazon CloudFormation stack (recommended)

This approach uses CloudFormation's manual resource import to adopt the auto-created resources into the customer's stack. No resources are deleted, so there is no interruption to resource discovery.

Caveats

Option B: Delete the auto-created resources, then create the stack

This approach removes the auto-created resources so the CloudFormation template can create them fresh. No template changes are required, and it works with any template regardless of what other resources it contains.

Caveats

Comparison

Full implementation steps

Option A: Import

Option A Steps (CLI)

1. Retrieve the ARNs of the existing resources

aws resource-explorer-2 get-index --region REGION --query 'Arn' --output text
aws resource-explorer-2 list-views --region REGION --query 'Views' --output text

2. Add DeletionPolicy: Retain to the AREX resources in the template

This is required by CloudFormation for any resource being imported. It ensures the resource is not deleted if the stack is later removed. The customer can change this after the import if desired.

Resources:
  MyIndex:
    Type: AWS::ResourceExplorer2::Index
    DeletionPolicy: Retain
    Properties:
      Type: LOCAL

  MyView:
    Type: AWS::ResourceExplorer2::View
    DeletionPolicy: Retain
    Properties:
      ViewName: my-view
      IncludedProperties:
        - Name: tags
    DependsOn: MyIndex

3. Create the import change set

Replace INDEX_ARN, VIEW_ARN, MyIndex, and MyView with the actual values. The logical resource IDs must match those used in the template.

aws cloudformation create-change-set \
  --stack-name STACK_NAME \
  --change-set-name ImportArex \
  --change-set-type IMPORT \
  --template-body file://template.yaml \
  --resources-to-import '[
    {
      "ResourceType": "AWS::ResourceExplorer2::Index",
      "LogicalResourceId": "MyIndex",
      "ResourceIdentifier": {"Arn": "INDEX_ARN"}
    },
    {
      "ResourceType": "AWS::ResourceExplorer2::View",
      "LogicalResourceId": "MyView",
      "ResourceIdentifier": {"ViewArn": "VIEW_ARN"}
    }
  ]' \
  --region REGION

4. Review the change set

aws cloudformation describe-change-set \
  --change-set-name ImportArex \
  --stack-name STACK_NAME \
  --region REGION

Verify both resources show Action: "Import" before executing.

5. Execute the change set

aws cloudformation execute-change-set \
  --change-set-name ImportArex \
  --stack-name STACK_NAME \
  --region REGION

After the import completes, subsequent stack operations (updates, deletes) work normally.

Option A Steps (Console)

1. Retrieve the ARNs

Navigate to Resource Explorer → Settings in the target Region. Note the index ARN. Then navigate to Views and note the view ARN.

2. Update the template as described above (add DeletionPolicy: Retain).

3. Import the resources

4. Review and execute the import.

Important constraint for mixed-resource templates

Import operations don't allow new resource creations. When using --change-set-type IMPORT to create a new stack, every resource in the template must be listed in --resources-to-import. You cannot mix imports and creates in the same operation.

If the template contains other resources beyond index/view (e.g., S3 buckets, Lambda functions), the customer has two paths:

Path 1: Import AREX resources first using a template containing only those resources, then run update-stack with the full template to add the remaining resources.

Path 2: Create the stack first with the non-AREX resources only (removing index/view from the template), then import the AREX resources into the existing stack. When importing into an existing stack, only the resources being imported need to be in --resources-to-import.

If the template contains only AREX resources, no extra steps are needed — a single import operation is sufficient.

Option B: Delete and Recreate

Option B Steps (CLI)

1. Get the index ARN and delete the index (this also deletes all views)

aws resource-explorer-2 get-index --region REGION --query 'Arn' --output text
aws resource-explorer-2 delete-index --arn INDEX_ARN --region REGION

2. Wait for deletion to complete

aws resource-explorer-2 get-index --region REGION --query 'State' --output text

Repeat until the state is DELETED or the command returns an error (indicating the index no longer exists).

3. Run create-stack as normal

aws cloudformation create-stack \
  --stack-name STACK_NAME \
  --template-body file://template.yaml \
  --region REGION

Option B Steps (Console)

1. Navigate to Resource Explorer → Settings in the target Region.

2. Delete the index from the settings page.

3. Wait for the index to be fully deleted.

4. Create the CloudFormation stack as normal.

Learn more about Amazon CloudFormation

To learn more about CloudFormation, see the following resources: