Cross-Account, Cross-Region Inventory Discovery via Service-Linked Roles
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Managed services in cloud systems face challenges in performing cross-account and cross-region inventory discovery due to dependencies on internal cloud services that are not available in all geographic regions, limiting their availability and functionality.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of a managed service that requests permission for a service-linked role, creates a dedicated service storage container with attached policies, configures data synchronization, and uses sharding logic to manage inventory data across user accounts and regions, enabling cross-account and cross-region inventory discovery.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If managed services depend on internal cloud services for inventory discovery, then inventory discovery functionality is provided, but availability is limited to regions where internal services are available
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a service-linked role as an intermediary mechanism that enables managed services to access inventory information across user accounts without depending on region-specific internal services. This role acts as a universal mediator that works across all geographic regions, resolving the availability limitation.
Solution Approach 2:
The service-linked role provides universal functionality across all geographic regions and user accounts. Instead of relying on region-specific internal services, the service-linked role serves as a multi-functional interface that enables inventory discovery everywhere the cloud provider operates.
2Adaptability or versatility
If service-linked roles are used for cross-account inventory discovery, then comprehensive inventory access is enabled, but service configuration complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The service-linked role is configured in advance during service enrollment, performing the complex authentication and permission setup before the managed service needs to access inventory data. This preliminary configuration simplifies subsequent operations by establishing trust relationships upfront.
Solution Approach 2:
Once the service-linked role is established, the managed service can autonomously access inventory information across user accounts without requiring continuous manual configuration or authentication. The role manages its own access rights, reducing operational complexity.
3Quantity of substance
If inventory data is collected from multiple user accounts and regions, then comprehensive inventory information is obtained, but data management complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments inventory data by organizing it within the context of individual user accounts and regions while maintaining a unified service-linked role for access. This segmentation allows comprehensive data collection while preserving organizational boundaries and simplifying data retrieval operations.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques for managed services of cloud systems to perform inventory discovery of computing instances with particular configurations across user accounts in an organization, and across regions in the cloud systems. Cloud systems offer managed services that automate the management of configurations of computing instances on behalf organizations. To perform cross-account discovery of inventory information for these computing instances, the managed services often harness other internal cloud services, such as internal data-integration services and query services. However, some of these internal cloud services are not available in all the geographic regions of the cloud system, and due to these dependencies, the managed services are in turn not available in all regions. Techniques and architectures are described herein for managed services to perform the cross-account inventory discovery such that these managed services can be made available across all regions, and for launches of new regions in the cloud system.