Turning on cross-Region search by creating an aggregator index - Amazon Resource Explorer
About the aggregator index
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).

Turning on cross-Region search by creating an aggregator index

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About the aggregator index

Amazon Resource Explorer stores the information it collects about the resources in an Amazon Web Services Region to a local index that Resource Explorer creates and maintains in that Region. For example, assume that you have an Amazon EC2 instance in the US West (Oregon) Region. Resource Explorer stores the details about that resource in the local index in the US West (Oregon) Region.

To support searching for resources across all Amazon Web Services Regions in your account, you can convert the local index in one Region to be the aggregator index for your account.

The aggregator index contains a replicated copy of the local index in every other Region where you turned on Resource Explorer. This lets you create views in the Region that contains the aggregator index whose results can include resources from all Amazon Web Services Regions in the account.

The following diagram shows an example of how the aggregator index works. In this example Amazon Web Services account, the administrator does the following:

  • Turns on Resource Explorer in three Amazon Web Services Regions (us-east-1, us-west-2, and eu-west-1) by creating indexes in those Regions. Each Region contains its own local index.

  • Chooses not to create an index in the sa-east-1 Region. Users can't perform searches in sa-east-1, and no resources from that Region appear in any search results.

  • Creates the aggregator index for the account in the us-west-2 Region. This causes Resource Explorer to replicate information from the local indexes in all other Regions where Resource Explorer is turned on to the aggregator index. This allows searches performed in us-west-2 to include resources from all three Regions in which Resource Explorer is turned on.

This configuration means that a user can perform cross-Region searches in only us-west-2, which contains the aggregator index. Only views from that Region can return results from all Regions in the account.

Diagram shows Resource Explorer is turned on in three Regions and one Region has the aggregator index and default view. One Region is not turned on.
Legend
Resource Explorer is turned on in this Amazon Web Services Region, and its resources are catalogued into an index in that Region. This Region's index is also replicated (indicated by the arrows) to the Amazon Web Services Region that contains the aggregator index.
This Amazon Web Services Region contains the aggregator index. Resource Explorer replicates the resource information collected in all other Amazon Web Services Regions into this Region.
The default view created by Quick Setup includes all resources in all Amazon Web Services Regions.