Turning on cross-Region search by creating an aggregator index - AWS Resource Explorer
About the aggregator index

Turning on cross-Region search by creating an aggregator index

With cross-region search enabled, you can search for resources across all of the Regions in your AWS account.

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About the aggregator index

AWS Resource Explorer stores the information it collects about the resources in an AWS 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 AWS 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 AWS Regions in the account.

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

  • Turns on Resource Explorer in three AWS 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
Gear icon with magnifying glass, representing system configuration or search settings. Resource Explorer is turned on in this AWS 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 AWS Region that contains the aggregator index.
Notebook icon representing a document or file with lined pages. This AWS Region contains the aggregator index. Resource Explorer replicates the resource information collected in all other AWS Regions into this Region.
Blue square border with white interior, representing a placeholder for an image. The default view created by Quick Setup includes all resources in all AWS Regions.